Detroit, MI - HDTV - Page 3

Good news, WDIV has gone back to one sub-channel.

Rick

Has anyone been having trouble with WXYZ (ABC) lately (past few days)?

I've been getting them in pretty good for the past few months and all of a sudden my signal has dropped 20-30+ points, to the point of being unreliable for recording on my HD Tivo. It keeps jumping up and down on both tuners.

All others are the same, no drop at all.

I had problems with WXYZ a while ago, but I got a new Antenna's Direct XG91 and it solved it, or so I thought. Signal was at a solid 68-71.

Anyone else?

WXYZ is fine but WB 20 is a mess for me, checked http://home.cogeco.ca/~dxinfo/tropo.html and we been having a lot of Tropo the last few weeks. If you scroll down to the bottom you can look at history, and while I was scrolling down I noticed we are due for some strong tropo next week too...

Is there any word on when Comcast might pick up WKBD-DT?

Thanks, Matt.

Ok, I'm a little fuzzy on Tropo. I understand that it affects the signal, but is "a lot of tropo" a good thing or a bad thing?

My ABC signal has gone south over the past maybe 3 days.

A lot is bad ( unless you like to see how far you can get reception from). It causes what has been known as skip. My favorite memory of this happened in the late 70's or early 80's. Living in Flushing for Detroit stations I have my antenna pointed SSE, and one afternoon WJKB Ch 2 was swamped by a signal from MIAMI Florida for several minutes. What makes this really odd is that skip is most prominent at night, having it happen mid-day is really strange. Wish I had a VCR back then to record it.

DT Ch 41 that WXYZ uses is shared with a station on the west side of the state, and by others. You can look here to see what else is around: http://www.2150.com/broadcast/default.asp

Been surfing through the OTA channels for the past hour, and it seems that WDWB-DT 21-1 has no sound tonight. 21-2 has it, but not 21-1.

How disappointing...When WXYZ announced at 9pm last night that Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal would be delayed 1/2 hr for a kitchen remodeling show I knew the replay wouldn't be in HD. And that's exactly what happened. I pray this is not going to become a regular occurance. Infomercials belong after Midnight, where God intended them.

Has anyone else experienced frequent audio drops on WXYZ OTA? They were happening every minute or two last night. Very annoying.

Received the new guide over the night, not so bad...

Any info on the 6412 deployed in the area? Do these things cost more money than the single tuner dvr?

The short answer, all the DTV stations in the Detroit market are sending
out PSIP except channel 39. The only DirecTV receiver I've seen that
uses the OTA PSIP is the RCA DTC-100.

The long answer, PSIP (Program & System Information Protocol) consists
of several data tables. The most commonly transmitted OTA are:

MGT - Master Guide Table - This tells the receiver what other tables
are being transmitted and how to find them.

VCT - Virtual Channel Table - This defines which virtual channel number
to associate with which subchannel and analog channel. In other words,
it tells the reciever that 58.2 should be known as 2.1.

RRT - Rating Region Table - It carries the definitions of the TV ratings
system(s) in use.

STT - System Time Table - It carries the time of day, date and DST info.

EIT - Event Information Table - There can be 4 to 128 instances of this
table. Each instance carries the basic EPG info for 3 hours of programming.
This is where the program title, duration, rating, etc. are transmitted.

ETT - Extended Text Table - There can be up to 128 instances of this
table. These are associated with the EITs and carry the extended
program descriptions.

Hope that helps, rather than confuses!

They may be sending PSIP info out, but often it's wrong and useless. I have to laugh at the STT, every station has a different time and often a different year! There are dozens of reliable time bases on the Internet why not tie into one of them? The theory behind PSIP is great, in practice it's barely even a bad joke. I have an RCA that can utilize it, I turned it off years ago.

I think it's going to be the same price as the single tuner. I've called Comcast several times and keep getting a different story. One CSR said they already got them in but there are none left and that new shipments could come at any time. Two other CSRs said that they won't get any until January. Plus I've also heard that they have some but do not have the remotes in so they are waiting until they get the remotes.Who knows. I'm going to just keep calling every couple of weeks.

I just called and they added me on a waiting list and said they'll call me when its available. Hopefully by December.

Someone please ask them when they'll add WKBD-DT.

Does anyone know if Comcast still forces you to do an HD install or if you can pick up a box yourself from the main office? I remember last March when I got my hd, comcast made me pay $30 to come and do a 5 minute install and I'm about to purchase a 2nd bedroom set... Finally why doesn't Comcast give you NBATV when you subscribe to nba league pass like everyone else? I just found out that all the good games are put on nba tv.

Anybody else having trouble with WTVS? I am getting a strong signal but I have noticed other problems with this channel that I haven't on other local digitals.
My setup:
Sony KD34XS955 with built in ATSC tuner
Channel Master 4221 UHF antenna in the attic
My location from the towers is 12-14 miles

I've had this setup for less than a week but I've noticed that WTVS is flagging 720p on my television; it also appears to be 'zoomed' (noticed this watching Smart Travels, the "Sm" cut off the screen-- following program appeared zoomed too); and it seems that I experience some convergence issues on my display when watching WTVS but I don't see it on any other channel. These symptoms do not seem to indicate a problem with the station but it is the only local digital station that I've experienced these problems with....DVDs, SD, my local analogs are all fine.

Anyone able to get HD with an indoor powered antenna? I may try this but thought I'd check here first.

Thanks

Yes,but it depends on where you are,and where your antenna is.

I do in Canton but I'm always having to move it around to get constant reception. I'm looking for a better solution.

I live in Canton as well. I can get (at least some of the time) 2, 4, 7, 50 and 56. The only one that is truly reliable is 4. The others come in fine sometimes, other times they go in and out at regular intervals. Maybe airplanes from Metro or Mettatal?

I have a Radio Shack power amplified antenna sitting on the fireplace.

Jim

I also live in Canton. I just moved in, so the last couple of weeks I have been doing a lot of expeirments.

The Silver sensor worked the best for an indoor antenna, but you do have to move it around depending on the channel you are trying to lock, not good for HD TIVO :-).

I am using a Terk 44 (Clip on the dish) and that worked O.K until I put a DC block on the antenna output from the Terk diplexer. Now I get eveything pretty well. A couple of the channels are in the High 60's and there are some occasional drop outs on Fox 2-1 so it is obviously not the best.

I would like to get an attic intall, but would like to find a very good intaller and get some feedback on how well an attic antenna install has historically perfomed in Canton.

I lost FOX 58.1 on Sunday, it came back for a bit on Sunday afternoon but now I get no signal what so ever.

I'm in Windsor and got it fine until Sunday using a SRT-151.

Anyone else?

I'm moving to Novi in a month and just can't make up my mind what HDTV provider to get! Should I just go with brighthouse?

I tried a couple different indoor antenna's and here are my results. (I'm in Clinton Township):

Passive Jensen antenna - Couldn't get anything
Powered Philips antenna with gain adjustment up to 45db - Nothing again

Zenith Silver Sensor - Now I can get FOX, ABC, WB, a local Mt. Clemens channel and I think UPN came in as well. I ordered an amp to run along with it to hopefully boost my signal to those stations as well as pick up the others (CBS and NBC mainly)

The Silver Sensor is great especially since I couldn't get anything before, I'll update this once the amp shows up.

Does anyone here have WideOpenWest (WOW) as their provider? I'm getting mixed signals (not literally) from them on their HD programming. I have basic analog and would just like to add the HD to my package. Also, very important to note that I have a Sony Grand Wega with a built-in HD tuner and Digital Cable tuner (DCR). Why should I need the STB for just the HD? I don't want all the digital cable, just the HD.
Maybe I'm way off here but I thought I could avoid the STB because of the built in tuners.
Any ideas?

Thanks

I have the exact same situation, which is why I'm trying to get the signals through an antenna. I called and asked for just HD but they told me I had to get digital cable, what rubbish.

call them back. The first person I talked to said no problem, we can add HD to your analog. When I got to the next person, they said no, you must have digital. Third person said, you can have just analog and HD without Digital. So I went with it (2 out of 3 isn't bad). We'll see on Saturday as they are bringing me an HD STB and doing th "install" (dropping off a box). It cost $15 a month but I think I'd pay someone that to get up and adjust my antenna every few minutes anyway. I'll be sure to post my results.

Strange stuff on the WB's presentation of The Whole Nine Yards tonight. Sounded like the left and right audio channels were off about two seconds from each other. The left channel would play a sound and then two seconds later the right would play it. Needless to say, the novelty wore off in about 30 seconds and it was on to channels that worked correctly.