Charlotte, NC - OTA - Page 176

Issue is most converter boxes can't hold more than 12 hours of information since that is all that is required by the FCC. Because the converter boxes were so cheap to build, the very basics that could make them work were done. Some of those boxes will crash if a station sends more than 12 hours of data. Stations can send up to 2 weeks worth of data, but the converter boxes would all puke.

So, digital-to-analog converter boxes are the weak link and PSIP has to be dumbed down to their level. Bummer (but, understandable). I wish the technology existed to satisfy their limitations while simultaneously providing extended PSIP to modern digital TVs and DVRs which can handle a full week or two of programming guide (my CM-7000PAL has current plus 7 days program guide capability).

I've wondered about EPG limitations, too, and received an e-mail request many months ago asking about extending the EPG. That got me doing some investigating.
A couple of local stations (both under the same owner) run about 48 hours of EPG, but I found that it takes (literally) forever to download any program detail info, even on an expensive box.
I have an LG converter (3200, IIRC).
It takes two or three tries, in order to get any detail info beyond the three or six hour "current" window of information. The LG box simply times-out.

From what I understand of the ATSC rules, you can't send just the program title type of info on stuff that's 24-36, or more hours out, while giving detail information on the stuff that's coming up in the next few hours. So, you'd need to constantly make updates, adding in details as you go. If you give detail info, it has to be outputted every time.

I had my boss look for something at NAB that might do better, but no luck.......
If you populate the EPG with detail information, and try to go beyond the standard 12-24 hours, you'll have "time-out" issues on the receivers, or just plain "crash" them.

I guess the only thing left to try, would be to broadcast an entire (all stations included) EPG on one station that has plenty of spare bandwidth, and just have people delete that "channel" (maybe call it channel "99-411" or something) if it crashes their system. USDTV used to do all of their EPG on one master channel. You'd probably not be able to switch stations directly from this kind of guide, but you'd at least get some "look-ahead" range.

We have a TiVo box which gets its guide data from Tribune Media via internet connection. Works very good for both cable and OTA antenna. But unfortunately for you, Channel Master probably no longer supports the 7000Pal DVR since they now have the newer 7400 version. So it is unlikely they would provide any kind of firmware upgrade that could replace TVGOS. And I'm not even sure if the 7000 has an ethernet connection, especially since it gets its TVGOS data OTA. And the 7000 was rebranded from Dish Network, and apparently they no longer support it either. You may possibly want to look at the PHD-VRX DVR from epVision as an option. It has 2 very good dual input tuners. But not sure about extended guide data.

Good luck with that. South Carolina ETV has stopped sending out TVGOS already. My two Sony DVRs have listings until Monday. After that the guide is a solid wall of "No Listing" blocks. PSIP is not an option for those units. Even worse, they set their clock using TVGOS, and there's no way to set the clock manually. The next time the power goes out or the unit reboots for some reason, the clock reverts to midnight on January 1, 2004 or some such date.

I'll probably order a TiVo Premiere tomorrow and get a "lifetime" subscription, for a total of $650. That's only a bit more than I paid for one of the Sonys almost exactly seven years ago. (The other one was at a much cheaper clearance-sale price, fortunately.)
Edited by jtbell - 11/10/12 at 2:00pm

You can make it work..I have...but you have to up the table rates far higher than the ATSC spec...and that makes the crappier receivers really puke..Plus, since I have 7 stations running combined on master (and backup) PSIP generators..the generators would crash should a large number of program changes be made and pushed all at once. This causes the tables to be refreshed repeatedly and too quickly crashing both generators and receivers... So we had to limit the push to once per day in the early am.

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I have the same problem.. Wifey has one and uses it heavily..she will NOT be a happy camper once that happens and i will have to provide a solution fast.

Yeah, I can see where it would be a problem, it's a lot of data. I have my DVR (MythTV) set to pull 14 days guide data for about 26 stations and if I do a full refresh it can take a good 15 minutes to pull all of the info from SD over a fast internet connect and then process it into the database. If it set Myth to use the EIT data instead the way it handles it is to open an idle tuner and then constantly scan the configured channels. It doesn't work that well and the Myth people don't recommend it due to differences in how various stations handle it. i.e. from bad to good. IMO, some of the broadcast stations are not that interested in their OTA viewers vs those getting the station via cable or satellite.

BTW, this isn't normal behavior - I have about 40 stations, I do a full refresh often, and it has never taken more than 3 minutes, maybe 5, with a full 14 day refresh. I suspect it is actually your SQL that isn't tuned (look around for mysqltuner.pl to speed this up) - the download actually usually only takes me 1 minute, and it is 2 minutes doing the database insertion and checking...

Ouch! Looks like Sony DVR owners will be impacted far worse than CM-7000PAL owners when TVGOS is discontinued. The CM-7000PAL automatically switches to PSIP whenever TVGOS is unavailable. Time can chosen as a weighted average of the times transmitted OTA locally, or time can be manually set on the DVR if the OTA times seem inaccurate.

Since your South Carolina station has already dropped TVGOS, then WTVI probably won't be far behind.

My DVR automatically detects new digital stations and it found 25.1 WDMC DayStar religious television network this morning, at 85% signal strength. I did a re-scan on my TV which scans both analog and digital and found that the old snowy analog ch. 25 was gone, apparently replaced by digital 25.1 which is sharp and clear, though still 480i SD. For me its just another channel to delete, but it will probably be strong competition for 55.3.

You shouldn't be needing to do this. Maybe you are not getting the data that you think you are getting.

WSOC-TV will end transmission of ROVI in April 2013.

"I found this on a forum for TVGOS. It is a copy of a guy from NYC last year, don't blame me."

You, and perhaps six dozen other people who have been complaining on this type of forum since the digital switchover. Thats it. Sadly, nobody else cares: this problem has dropped so far to the bottom of cable company and Rovi priority lists that it will likely never have a solution. TVGOS was a nice recorder concept for frugal cable users for a few years, but the experiment failed spectacularly and the free ride is over: if you want a feature-rich point-and-click recorder/timer system today be prepared to pay thru the nose for it. Your choices are:

1. Continue to use your Panasonic, but in total manual VCR-like mode with no TVGOS grid of any kind.

2. Pay a monthly fee for the ComCast DVR or a TiVO. Connect either of them to your Panasonic when you need a DVD copy of something (the TiVO can also network to your PC for lossless file transfer).

3. Pay a rather hefty upfront one-time fee of $600 to buy a TiVO (or similar recorder) with lifetime guide subscription.

4. Pull every last hair out of your skull trying to make a home theater PC work like your Panasonic.

To be brutally honest, DVD/HDD recorders with TVGOS laid a gigantic egg, they didn't make significant money for anyone involved, and most consumers jumped on the cable rental PVR the second they could get access to one. The ratio of people willing to pay upwards of $100 monthly for a cable package that includes the PVR far far exceeds the number of people who wouldn't be caught dead spending more than $50 a month. Its simple business math: few consumers wanted to pay $400+ for a "kludgy" TVGOS recorder when they could get the fully-integrated ComCast PVR for a few dollars more a month on the cable bill they were paying anyway. So the Panasonics etc were discontinued in 2008 and not updated for digital cable signals, the TVGOS parent company lost interest in moving the platform forward while maintaining backwards compatibility, TV stations couldn't be bothered to keep analog TVGOS going after they switched to digital broadcasting, and the digital QAM regulations had so many gaping loopholes that ComCast and other cablecos took the opportunity to break cable compatibility with anything but their own hardware. The result today is most areas are denied access to the complete basic channel range unless they rent the cable PVR or jury-rig some convoluted way to make their DVD recorder and decoder box coexist.

But TVGOS has disappeared from one neighborhood after another: its an annoyance for cable companies to provide, they have no $ to gain by offering it, and hardly any subscribers are bothering them about it- it ain't coming back. Get used to setting your Panasonic manually, or get used spending a lot more money for the same functionality: the North American mass market chose the cable rental PVR by a factor of 96%. (Europe, Asia and Australia still have a wide selection of TVGOS-style recorders and steady pilot signals because they have no cable monopolies to interfere.) TVGOS corporate shills at Rovi will gas you to death with BS statements that "TVGOS is officially available in your area on X channels as of today." Understand this might be factually true, yet utterly impossible for you to actually use. Its gotten to the point in many neighborhoods where you need to know someone who knows someone at your local cable office who can personally direct a TVGOS generator into your distribution block (there are threads about this on dedicated TVGOS forums).

Source (http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/338819-Panasonic-DMR-EH50-TVGOS-gone-no-data-can-this-be-fixed)

Let alone the number of people like my wife and me who use an antenna on the roof and don't want to pay any monthly fee for TV. We're lucky TiVo still sells one model that receives OTA broadcasts. We'll take the gamble that TiVo will still be around in about three years when the "lifetime subscription" fee breaks even.

For a lot less than $650 you can easily build a DVR that easily exceeds the capabilities of any commercial DVR out there. Purchase a HD Homerun Dual. It has 2 tuners but can simultaneously receive 4 broadcasts if you want to watch or record a subchannel of one of the mains. They were selling refurbs of these for $49 last week. Install Microsoft Media Center. It comes free with Win 7 Pro. Purchase a $15 MCE Remote control and plug that into the PC. Hook the PC to the TV. You are done. There are no more fees and the Win 7 version of MCE provides free guide data.

If you want to build a PC here are some specs that I used to build a powerful, but also very small and quiet PC for this purpose. It has the advantage that it can also play a lot of internet media from Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, etc.

• Antec ISK 310-150 Black Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case
• PNY GeForce GT 430 1024MB DDR3 PCI-Express 2.0 DVI+VGA+HDMI Low Profile Graphics Card
• Intel Core I3-2120T processor
• Crucial 64 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT064M4SSD2
• ASRock H67M-ITX Socket 1155/ Intel H67/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&V&GbE/ Mini-ITX Motherboard
• Corsair XMS3 4 GB 1333MHz PC3-10666 240-pin DDR3 Memory
• Windows 7 Vista XP Media Center MCE PC Remote Control and Infrared Receiver
• ARCTIC 80mm F8 case fan

For a little more work, you can forgo the Windows license and install Mythbuntu. This will require you to pay $25/year for guide data. In this setup you can take it as far as a whole house DVR system, automatic commercial detection/skipping/deletion, and a lot more. You can have tuners connected to different antennas pointed in different directions. When you change channels for live TV or recording the system will choose the correct tuner for that channel.

Yep.. and the you add remote potato so you can watch shows remotely..

Tesla_engineer - Has something changed with WHKY? I can no longer receive it from the Hickory Tower. Should I try to get it from the CLT transmitter now?

No change. I have not received any problem reports from anyon else.

I did have problem starting Oct 1 with the new sat feed we had to move to for 14.2 to 14.4. It wanted to spend alot of time on black. Looks like they have the problem fixed. We did see a problem Monday with high wind in Tenn the uplink.

Check 14.1 if you have problems, it all comes from in house.

I checked 14.1. It's a no go like the sub-channels. It's as if the power dropped significantly towards Huntersville. I have seen this change on two different TVs using different antennas. Seems like it happened around mid-October or so. The antennas check out OK as I can pickup WUNE in the same direction but much further away.

Here in Indian Trail, WHKY (Charlotte transmitter) has been coming in solidly 24/7 at 65% to 70%, well above threshold level, for a over a week. That's after being unwatchable for several months. My guess is, fewer leaves on trees.

I wasn't able to pick WHKY from East Charlotte. Tesla_Engineer says it's not part of the footprint. So I've been viewing it fine for the last 9-10 months from the tower in Hickory even through leaves. Ironically the leaves are mostly gone now but I'm getting a lot less signal. It's enough where I can no longer lock onto it. Before Mid-October I could watch WHKY even through storms with no issues.

Going out on a ledge, late fall is often a time of tropospheric ducting which takes signals (often in the VHF/UHF range) and extends their distance as a result of atmospheric conditions. Usually this helps in the reception of distant stations, but it can also disrupt closer in stations miss the mark of where they are normally received. It is possible the signal path is now skipping over you, however it should return within a few days... This is only one explanation if the signal/transmitter hasn't changed on the broadcasting end.

I just rescanned my TV and could not get WHKY 14.1 or any of the subchannels here in Mint Hill. I had them previously of my TV and Dish receiver. What's changed?

It seems to have gotten worse. I was getting a partial lock on WHKY until a few days ago. Now it won't even scan.

Is it safe to say that the presence and absence of leaves can have positive and negative effects? I have found that reception just downright varies between foliage and non-foliage - I often re-aim my antenna between seasons and am able to receive the same channels. The discussion regarding WHKY could be that for those receiving it in the summer and beginning to lose it over the past few weeks benefited from the signal reflecting off the leaves - now that the leaves are falling or have fallen, the signal has fewer objects (like leaves) to reflect it. On the other hand, the absence of leaves benefits those whose desired signals are outright blocked by the leaves. Engineers that hang out here, am I correct?

Eric

What is the power level of the WHKY transmitters? Is the Hickory signal anywhere near a full power 1000kw? Perhaps that can make a difference, as well as the design of the transmitting antenna. Is it top mounted or side mounted? I know WBTV, WSOC, WJZY, and WCCB are full power, and WCNC is around 800kw. Although WCNC supposedly had a permit to top mount and increase to 1000kw, they apparently have not yet chosen to do so.

It's plausible except that I could receive WHKY last winter before there were leaves on the trees. Ever since they turned on the new transmitter at baker mountain, I was able to receive WKHY with no issues at all. Storms, no storms, leaves no leave. Now the signal is gone.

According to TVFOOL http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3dcc49946da2b100 I'm only 8.1 miles from the Charlotte transmitter for WHKY. I had it before with all the leaves. Something has changed dramatically.

When it comes to trees, here's my "standard" observations:



As far as the signal fields are concerned, the area behind trees could best be called "dynamic chaos". Think of a stage curtain made from strips of both reflective and opaque strips. Turn on a fan and try to see what is behind the curtain. Your ability to see what is behind this curtain mimics the ability (or lack) of the antenna to "see" the incoming signals.

Every leaf, twig, branch, limb, and tree truck will have some effect on the incoming signals based mostly on their moisture content. The higher the frequency, the more pronounced the effects. The effects will vary by frequency, even within a single channel. When the wind blows, the pattern of interfering objects will change, the resulting signals fields will change, and the tuner's error correction circuits have to go to work. If they are overwhelmed, reception errors will be apparent as anything from mild errors to a complete loss or absence of reception in response to the quality and strength of the incoming signals.

Every variation of wind and moisture will cause reception to vary by introducing both signal loss and complex multi-path. Some folks have little to no problems with tree-blocked reception (they're the lucky ones), others will have a wide variety of reception problems ranging from mild to severe. Sometimes a two antenna system with a switch can be used to optimize reception of various stations for different times of year and different local conditions.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot that can be done from the antenna side of the equation to solve these problems. An amplifier might help a bit by shifting the signal into a "sweeter" spot in the tuner's adaptive equalizer performance band, but the effectiveness is often highly variable. Sometime it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Think of it this way: Put your paycheck through a paper shredded. Now, attach a large magnifying glass to the heap and try to cash the check. If the bank can't read it, they won't cash it. All the magnifying glass did was make the shredded pieces look larger. Likewise, amplifying a distorted or "shredded" signal makes it "bigger", but not "better".

Selecting the best mounting location is preferred. Tree trimming or removal, if possible, may be required. But, sometimes, you're just plain out of luck.