Fort Smith, AR - HDTV - Page 6

I thought you meant you weren't picking up anything anywhere.

Is it a Samsung OTA-only box, or OTA+DirecTV box?

It's a Samsung HD decoder with DirecTV and I'm inputting my OTA and basic cable through it as well.

Try unplugging the Samsung to reset it. Then, do a re-scan. Make sure you're scanning for OTA digital, not OTA NTSC or Cable NTSC. Does your Samsung model have separate coax inputs for satellite, cable and OTA? If so, make sure they're all connected to the correct input.

Not that I'm a huge fan of the Winter Olympics, but I'm guessing that our only means to watch the Games in HD will be via Universal HD?

I've not seen or heard anything from KNWA that would lead me to believe otherwise . . .

KNWA doesn't even have a digital signal yet. Their sista station in LR, KARK, just got HD this week, but they're still only xmitting @ a measly 4kW, so not too many people can receive the station there. Blame their cheap owner, Nexstar.

You can watch quite a bit of HD olympics on UHD channel 74 on DirecTV.

I don't know if anybody noticed, but the fine engineers at Hearst-Argyle fixed the white "sparks" problem that KHOG had with its digital programming. HD shows on ABC look fantastic now.

I haven't seen any "white sparks" on 29-1. Do you get KHOG-DT OTA or from cable?

Has anyone except me gotten terrible ESPNHD reception over the past few days in and around Van Buren?

I would think this might be my box if it wasn't only affecting that one channel. It seems like it's unable to sync to the stream or something. Every few seconds the channel freezes and glitches, it's been like this every time I've checked it for the past two days.

Hello from Greenwood, about 15 miles SE of Fort Smith for those not familiar with the area. I've been following this thread for a short while now and share everybody's wish for our local NBC to go high power and HD and for Fox to do something. My OTA digital reception here is actually better than one might expect. I live near the top of a hill and have a Channel Master 4221 antenna and preamp mounted on a mast just above the eaves and a Hughes HTL-HD receiver. I can almost always get Tulsa NBC (2-1) and CBS (6-1), and PBS from both Eufaula (3-1) and Tulsa (11-1), in addition to KFSM and KHOG/KHBS (both channels) and KAFT. I can even get KFTA's (KNWA south) low-power digital signal (24-1) if I move the antenna and raise it a few feet. But try as I might, I can only get a decent signal from the Tulsa Fox station (23-1) occasionally, usually on summer evenings. I suspect that if I raised my antenna another 20 feet or so and switched to a 4228 or similar antenna I might get Fox from Tulsa most of the time, but then I'd be faced with ugly-antenna issues with the wife (some of you may know what I'm talking about) and probably reception issues with the local channels because of the narrower beamwidth of the 4228. Anyway, just wanted to say hello and let everybody know there's digital life down here in Greenwood and that I appreciate this thread and follow it with interest.

I get KHOG from Cox cable. The "white sparks" had been an issue here in Fayetteville for awhile but they upgraded some software or something last week to fix the problem. It had something to do with ABC being broadcasted in 720p instead of 1080i. The "sparks" were only noticeable on dark scenes.

Must've been a problem between KHOG-DT and cox. I never saw the white sparks OTA.

Welcome to the forum, arkeng. You're probably correct about switching from the CM 4221 to the 4228. You would gain signal strength, but also gain (probably unwanted) directionality, and might have to rotate the antenna when switching between Tulsa and Ft Smith/Fay stations. And the 4228 being twice as large, gives you more wind loading on the mast, which would be an issue on a windy hilltop. And then there's the "ugly" problem....

You might do just as well by raising the height of the 4221.

I live in Van Buren and I haven't had any problems. I have a Cablecard.

I saw sparks OTA and through the cable. But it does seem fine now.

Major pixelization on KHOG-DT 29-1 yesterday and today. Signal strength is a steady 100.

Anyone else having problems with 29-1 OTA?

I got a signal of 74 and it is unwatchable due to pixelation....

thank goodness the upn in springfield has the hog game on today.....

Pixelation on 29-1 here in Greenwood also, but 40-1 is fine.

Anyone else having reception problems with 29-1 OTA, please report them here.

Or call the News Dept. at 479 783-8133 and ask them to forward the reception problem to an engineer or MCO.

We are going to join this forum on a trial basis. We will try to answer some of your questions and listen to your complaints.

We are just a few engineers who are HD viewers, just like you. Anything we say on this forum is not necessairly a 40/29 official answer.

This is also something we are doing on our own, not on company time or as a part of our job. So don't expect an immediate answer. We will try to check in at least every week or so.

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In answer to the most receient problem on 29-1. I am suprised as technically savy you all seem to be that nobody related the pixelation problem last weekend with the weather.
The cause was with the microwave link between the studio and the transmitter. All digital programming orginates in the Fort Smith control room. It is then sent to the Fayetteville 29-1 transmitter via a relay point at Sunset (East of Winslow). The snow caused several problems which degraded the signal. First was the heavy snow and sleet in the atmosphere severely attenuated the radio signal causing the reception to become weak at the relay point at Sunset. Sleet is highly reflective to microwave signals and effectively spread the signal just like a bunch of little mirrors hanging in the air would scatter a light beam. Even after the snow cleared up there was enough sticking to the microwave antennas to attenuate the signal enough to cause it to have a high bit error rate. When it warmed up enough to melt the ice and snow off the antennas, the signal got better. There is no backup for this system.

You probably had a good signal strength on your receiver. The problem was getting a good signal to the transmitter in the first place. Like computers, garbage in gives garbage out. Channel 40-1 did not have the problem because the weather in the river valley was not as bad.

We were surprised at how little bad weather it took to degrade the digital signal. This was the first major sleet and snow since the system was installed. The analog signal follows the same path and didn't look as bad. This problem will be addressed by engineering to determine if there is anything we can do to make it better in the future.

40/29engineering,
Welcome to the forum and thanks for the info on recent 29-1 reception problems.

I hope you can post future problems here so viewers aren't left in the dark about what's wrong. If not here, perhaps on your web site? I've seen this done in other markets.

40/29,

Thanks for posting and joining our forum!

Hello all,

My story...live in Bentonville and have had standard Cox Digital service since the first of January. Well I picked up a 32inch Sony Wega TV today (impulse buy) and spent the day reworking the living room around it.

I called Cox to have the add the free HD channels but declined the extras they tried to sell. So far, I have ABC, CBS and PBS on channels 700, 710 and 720. That's it. No other HD content. Is this typical of the Cox entry level digital package?

Lastly, I have the newest Motorola receiver...how do you have the receiver setup as far as output goes? I'm connected via component cables and the TV is capable of 1080i.

Thanks!

Alphastrike,

Yes, that is what you get from Cox for free. Do you have a cable box? It sounds like you do since you have the channels mapped to the 700s. I could get those channels before the cable card, but they were like 125.9 and 126.1 or something like that. When I got the cable card I was able to get those channels plus ESPN HD, Universal HD, InHD1, InHD2 and MHD. I think you get those other channels simply by adding any digital service.

By law, your cableco is supposed to offer those local OTA HD channels as part of unscrambled basic cable with no cable box or digital tier subscription needed, if you have a digital cable ready TV.

For some reason, I thought you were supposed to get ESPNHD, INHD1, INHD2, DiscoveryHD, UniversalHD, MusicHD all for free with cox. If you have any other questions about Cox hd with the DVR, feel free to ask.

When are we supposed to get ABC with 5.1 in northwest Arkansas? Isn't it only 2.0 channel now?

Speaking of KHOG-DT, why wasn't Grey's Anatomy in HD last night? Their weekend crew seems to really screw up HD a lot.

Thanks for posting 40/29! Your co-horts in Des Moines at KCCI also are regulars in my old market's board, and it's quite nice to have the local people on to help us out or give us any information that we wonder about.

1. We do not have 5.1 equipment at this time and there are no plans to purchase it in the immediate future. This is a corporate level decision, not ours.

2. The control room crew was busy with other tasks and didn't switch to HD until after the open ran, about 5 minutes.

So if I wanted to toss the DVR (not planning to but if), then all I would have to do is plug the coax into the back of the TV and I would get the locals in HD?