Detroit, MI - HDTV - Page 380

It's working for me. I'm glad to finally have access to all of this content I've been paying for!

How did you access it? Do you just tune to channel 1, or is the On Demand content available from the TiVo menu?

Based on how I had to access it, I'm guessing it's not totally ready. From memory, I went to Find TV Shows > Browse TV and Movies > Content Sources > first icon, which is blank.

I know I'm not getting the exact names right, but that should give you a good enough idea.

Only AM IBOC causes much more interference that FM IBOC does. Unlike FM, the AM analog signal does not have the capture effect to save it like FM does.

It's not just DXing. Ever try to listen to CKWW 580 anywhere west of Dequindre? The IBOC from WRDT (a second adjacent) ruins it with a huge wooshing noise (now, if CKWW were to turn it on, WRDT would get whacked everywhere north and east of Dearborn).

Have you tried to actually listen to WBZ or WHO in the last few years? They destroy each other. One might argue that skywave coverage is no longer relevant, but these stations are protected from interference and, in theory, serve the Detroit area at night. If they let the stations ruin the skywave service with IBOC, why are the skywave contours protected? Why can't WUFL go fulltime when WHO is knocking out WBZ anyway?

Of course, unlike FM, AM IBOC can cause annoying noise on a 1000 mV/m signal. Just listen to an AM IBOC station on a low-selectivity radio (a radio that actually sounds good on AM). The audio is full of noise from the station's own IBOC transmission.

AM IBOC was put forth as a "solution" to the AMers "what about me?" question when FM IBOC was demonstrated. A 10-year-old child, if he listened to an AM radio, would know it's not right.
Edited by itsthemultipath! - 1/17/13 at 9:36pm

xfinity on demand now shows up in the Tivo menus on my Premiere XL, and I was able to use the service last night to watch an episode of Revenge from November. It seems to work flawlessly, though it gets quite frustrating not being able to FF through the ads .

Back on the HD Radio topic..I enjoy most of the stuff played on WDTW 106.7 HD2, however I've noticed a "tinny" sound, for lack of a better term, on their songs. HD1 sounds normal. I've also noticed that along the 696 corridor around the Southfield area, the signal is intermittent. Are both of these a result of lack of bandwidth? I don't really see an email contact on their "Contact Us" page to ask them directly.

I used to be an avid dx'er
But with the advent of streaming and smart phone apps, I don't NEED to in order to hear the station anymore
I live in western Wayne, I do NOT hear the whooshes on 580

First off, HD radio runs at a lower power than the standard analog station, something like 10% of the power. So, when you are in a high RF area like Southfield, you start to experience interference. You don't hear it as easily on FM as you do on AM, but it is there. What you are experiencing is interference causing the HD station to be kicked off and it defaulting to the analog station. The HD comes back when the interference is lessened, probably by moving down the road a ways. This does not have anything to do with the "tinny sound", just the loss of HD signal.

Yeah, Southfield is a mess. We used to be on the 6th floor of the Travelers Tower (upstairs from Gary S) and had trouble monitoring our own signal using a directional VHF antenna aimed AT our tower which was just 3 miles away. All of the television stations within three miles of us and we could only lock on to WDIV-DT. Nothing else would hold a picture. We do much better in Ferndale sitting underneath 200KW erp of WOMC. Go figure. Not looking forward to moving BACK to Southfield, though being at 11 and Franklin DOES move us out of the Bermuda Triangle of RF.

Thanks guys, makes sense.

Just curious..is this move happening now, resulting in the loss of the -2 and -3 HD subchannels on 97.1 over the past couple of days? Will those be restored?

Hmmm. Not sure and the guy in charge is home sick with the flu (which might explain everything). I'm going over there later, but might not have time to ask anyone. IOW, they WILL be back.

.....aaaand they're back on. So, thanks/nevermind.

You're welcome. Chief is out and when I asked I got one of those, "Really???" responses. People immediately headed off down the hallway. Next time, just call the station. Apparently, until everything is in, they don't have the silence sensors running as we do. Any one of WYCD or WOMC's HDs goes dead and I have a stobe going off in my face and the chief is getting an automated phone call.

Growing pains. But, next time, call the office. They WILL tell someone.

Does HD on AM run at reduced power?
I assume it is directionalized just the same

I think it is the same. If the analog signal is directional, then so is the HD signal. It is just a subcarrier on the analog signal.

Then why are FM HD's are reduced power?

Because if it was near full power, it would interfere with the analog signal. When I said it was the same, I meant the same as FM, at reduced power. Either one has to be at low power to avoid the interference.

Hello,

I'm in Ferndale and generally get great HD from the major networks with just some cheap indoor rabbit ears, except for channel 50. However there are times, especially when it's windy outside, that the signal is intermittently lost.

What I would like to accomplish is:

• Improve the signal so windy days don't wreck havoc.
• Improve it enough so that besides my TV I can also split the signal and feed my HDHomeRun box for recording.
• Maybe get some other channels (the major station in Windsor might be nice) - not as critical as the previous two items.

Some questions I have:

• Is an attic location good enough or do I really need a rooftop installation?
• Can most, if not all, be accomplished without a rotor?
• What antennas have been found to be a good choices for this area and these tasks?

Thank you!

Late edit: FM would also be nice :-)

Chris

True, for the most part, but- With a complex AM directional array, a radial that may have a perfect null on the center (carrier) frequency may not be a good null on either or both of the sidebands.

This could be observed even in analog AM - when in a null not very far from an array, the sound can be distorted to the point that it sounds like amateur radio single-sideband on a regular radio (because the carrier is suppressed by the array - and such a signal actually can be heard clearly if one has an SSB receiver that covers the BCB frequencies).

A notable case-and-point is southwest of the transmit site of WXYT 1270. During the day, the analog AM is very hard to hear, being severely nulled out to protect WONW on 1280 in Defiance, Ohio. Near the Ohio line, one can barely hear the analog 1270 signal (just before sunset, WMKT in Charlevoix actually takes over the channel!), but the hiss is very strong on 1260 and 1280, because the DA does null it out as well as the analog in the center of the bandpass.

At sunset, the pattern is far more loose to the southwest (WONW's night protection area is far smaller), making WXYT a rare station in that it suddenly pops IN whilst making the change from day pattern to night pattern.

Where is the new WXYT array?
I remember hunting down the new 910 and 950 towers down there

Such a shame about 1310

I live just across 696 from you, so I can probably offer assistance. It appears the biggest issue around here is multipath rather than signal strength, and if reception is iffy on windy days, the culprit is likely trees in the area. Getting something outside is your best bet. Something in the attic 'might' work but you would get reflections from the rafters, etc. If you want CBET and some of the Canadian signals, outdoor installation is a must. Now, a small UHF only antenna outdoors 'can' get you WJBK's VHF signal reliably (as it's really strong), as well as all of the UHF locals. It does that for me, but not CBET which is on RF9.

If you want local FM as well, you might want a full band small outdoor antenna that handles VHF and UHF. I'd recommend a rotor for outdoor reception. If you're up on the roof, you'd might as well install one. If you want out of area reception, I'd install an FM only antenna and then a separate VHF Hi/UHF high gain antenna or seperate UHF, VHF and FM antennas if you are shooting for the moon. I'd check SolidSignal.com for a purchase. They're local.

You know what is really sad about this. It shows that the people running things don't even listen to their own product. And people wonder why the radio biz has been going downhill the last few years.

Well, having been in the new facility, I'm going to give them a pass on this one. The HD product IS a priority with this cluster, otherwise I wouldn't have said strobes in my face. And I'm sure when they get the whole thing moved, there will be plenty of alarms. Still, the analog product is the breadwinner and any issue with those signals isn't going to go unnoticed. I guarantee you, nobody pays more attention to the digital product than we do. But stuff happens when one undertakes moving five radio stations. And we've all come to assume that engineering knows the second one of the digitals goes down. They usually do. Which may be why those of us with HD radios didn't hotline WXYT. We assumed someone knew. This just told us that the failsafes weren't working. It'll get fixed.

Also, we're upgrading the digital transmitters. We all know this, internally. So, downtime on the digitals is kind of expected among us. Again, probably why none of us thought anything about it.

As for "radio biz going downhill the last few years" I'm not sure what you mean. All of our properties are posting some of the best numbers we've had since I got back. Listenership in our cluster has been rock steady if not gaining. Source?

So what's going to sound better
WXYT-am in HD
Or listening to it on 97.1-3?
Isn't the -3 usually bitstarved?

Well, it's talk, so it doesn't need as much bandwidth. However we're not going to throttle it down until it sounds like SiriusXM's traffic and weather channels if that's what you mean Give a listen to WYCD-HD3 and see what you think. WOMC-HD3 isn't much of an indicator as the programming arrives in the house "bitstarved" (except for the shows we originate, naturally).

I personally prefer WWJ and WXYT-AM on 97.1's subchannels than on AM HD. However, I still listen to WWJ via AM HD as the FM rebroadcast is about 45 seconds behind. When you get to work as close to airtime as I do, 45 seconds is a lot.

Not that it's important, but you DO know that the news programming from WWJ continues on WXYT-HD2 when WWJ-AM is carrying sports, right?

Yes, I knew that info, and always wondered if there was a double digit audience for WWJ when it is ONLY on 97.1-2. So tell me why there is such a LONG delay time for things of that nature, i used to be able to be at a ball game and listen to radio live, now it has all these delays. and in some cases its like 40 seconds.
if WWJ is the flagship for Michigan football, why is affiliate WTKA closer to live with a much shorter delay, its quite frustrating,
same thing with a 45 second difference between 950 HD, and 97.1-2

I guess my comparison should be more music based, such as 1200 AM HD and regular 99.9 FM stereo (i think that's the frequency)
also, didn't you say that some of these sub-channels are mono, in order to conserve data? unfortunately my HD receiver only lights up HD, and not "stereo" so i cant tell via an indicator if it's a stereo stream or not.

another question, if a station is non-commercial, must its sub-channels also be non-commercial as well?

It's never only on 97.1 HD 2. There's also a stream going which probably has more web and mobile device listening. Quite a bit, in fact, since web listening is easily quantified. But definitely not double-digit.

First, CBS REQUIRES a profanity delay. Not all stations do and many will dump out of that delay for live sports. Second, the ADDA delay works out to about 15-18 seconds (which is manually applied to the analog signal so they're in sync). On the subchannels, the ADDA is longer because the error correction is more robust since there's no analog signal to fall back to. I'm told once everyone's under the same roof, 97.1-2 will come off of the WWJ console pre-delay, which will cut off about 7-10 seconds of the disparity, but it'll still lag by half a minute or more.

As for the ballgames, we used to come out of digital and profanity so live was live. A few choice words picked up by the crowd mic forced the return of the profanity delay, I'm told. Plus, it seemed silly to run promos on WWJ about its availability on FM only to have it not be there every time the Tigers were on.

Another funny thing happened on the way to digital television. Suddenly, live game audio was ahead of TV. Between TV's ADDA, DVR lag time and 44k mile round trips to space, syncing the radio audio with television became almost impossible. And changes on our end that would fix it for a few would mess it up for others. So, I'm guessing it's become a "why bother" since the percentage of game listeners who are actually AT the same is only a tiny fraction of those listening elsewhere.

I didn't, no.

That's my understanding. Though I don't know how that would apply to noncoms that are on commercial frequencies.

thanks for the reply!!

how is WWJ not on FM when the tigers are on?

We used to kill the digital when the tigers were on. Kicking the digital off eliminates the need for the analog synchronization delay. Recently WXYT's taken to leaving digital on, but dropping the analog delay. We're setting the force-analog bit for HD radios tuned to the main, however none of my radios recognize that, so I get the jump-ahead, fall back 20 seconds in time issue when my radio gets a poor signal.

If I might be so presumptuous as to slip in a question about local OTA TV reception.......

Recently neither WMC nor nPVR will put ch. 32 TVO into the channel listing using my Microtune ATSC dongle. Previously, I was able to use MCE for both viewing and recording TVO even though no guide info was available.

It's not a signal strength problem because I'm able to view TVO on two TVs in my home. Has there been a recent change 32's PCIP that could cause this?

Any other ideas? I really miss being able to record programs from TVO.