Charlotte, NC - OTA - Page 185

cwcharlotte.com is held by domainsbyproxy which is used to keep the real owners anonymous. Right now the website is parked at godaddy. Interestingly, it is the same hosting company that wccbcharlotte.com is pointed to and both addresses point to servers which literally could be sitting on the same rack. Maybe just a coincidence.

WBTV is showing the NC - Duke game and Survivor is moved to 3.2 .

Its also on again at 1:35 in its entirety.

blackcat6,

What do you use to combined the signals from your three antenna? Or, do you run one signal into a separate tuner?

I'm thinking that I need to put up a second antenna and I'm trying to figure out if the two will just cause interference with each other and leave me with worse reception.

Thanks in advance.

tylerSC,

You're spot on about the scrolls some of the local affiliates put up. The almost make the programming unwatchable. It's terrible. And I have to think that they know they are ruining the experience for their viewers because they drop the scroll during commercial breaks. That tells me that advertisers have complained and you can't piss off the people with the cash. Customers - them you can disregard.

I run two the Winegard 9095 UHF antennas, one faces north to Asheboro/Greensboro from UNCC area and the other I split the difference between WSOC/WCCB and the Gaston feeds. Combining is with a 2-way splitter and I have no issues with intereference running this set up for the past few months.

cool. That's really promising news. I have an winegard ms2000 on my roof that does a great job with the channels to the northeast but it's pretty dodgy with those to the northwest. My wife has an "aesthetic" issue concerning most directional ota antennas so i'm thinking about putting a clear stream 4 long range antenna in the attic and pointing it to the north west. I'm hoping the extra size will compensate for the interference of the attic.

I'm leaning towards the clear stream only because I can pick it up at bestbuy, test it for a significant period and take it back if it fails. Care to share any thoughts about what drove you to the winegard?

BTW, sorry if this has all be discussed in this thread but it's a bit daunting to wade through almost 200 pages of posts.

Thanks again.

I have two hdhomerun duals sitting on my network and a HVR 2250 dual tuner card in my HTPC/DVR. Each of these devices is connected to a different antenna pointed in different directions. Two of the antennas are in the attic, one is an unobtrusive 4 bay bolted to the side of the house.

I am using the MythTV DVR software running on the HTPC to receive the signals from these antennas. MythTV organizes channels by input device. So in this case there are 3 devices with 2 tuners each. When you create the input, you do a scan for each one and any channel that it can pick up is associated with this device. You can also manually add and delete channels from each input device. This is all transparent to the end user. When you select a channel from the front end interface, it simply picks the correct input (antenna) for that channel. It works the same way for recordings. If the channel can be received on more than one device, you can give priority to the selection and even distinguish that by liveTV vs recordings. It will pick the first available device based on this priority.

MythTV doesn't care what kind of input device it might be. It can work with cable TV set top boxes via firewire, other boxes using an IR blaster, satellite FTA cards, analog tuners, and even http live streaming channels.

It works really well as an electronic version of the old antenna rotator concept. Myth is also smart enough to know that signal might contain subchannels and can receive them simultaneously using just one tuner. So effectively, 6 tuners becomes 12. I have 3 TVs in the house using this system and they can all view LiveTV or any recorded show through this system. I can also use any networked PC and even my android phone as well. They all have access to the OTA Live TV and recorded TV.

I simply could not find a way to pick up all the Charlotte OTA stations reliably using one antenna. This was how I solved it. I can receive everything, including WHKY from their main tower and it's rock solid even in very bad weather.
Edited by blackcat6 - 2/14/13 at 9:18am

That makes sense with the mythTV set up. I have a combination of TVs and an HDHomerun (for recordings). So, I'm struggling with a way to get ALL of the locals to the TV's (which don't take multiple inputs). I guess I could add a second HDHomerun AND some sort of box at each TV but I suspect this will get to complicated and I'll end up dropping off of the "wife friendly scale".

What do you use at the TV end to get the signals from MythTV?

Thanks for the input.

The HTPC was built by me and it's close to silent so I use it as a front end too. it has a cheap ~$45 GT430 card in it that provides an HDMI connection to one of the TVs. So serves as both a back end and a front end. I'm using a Zotac ID-41 for one of my set top boxes. These can be found for cheap on eBay. Basically any Atom/Ion2 class PC will be fine because Nvidia GPU does all the heavy lifting in regards to the display. On the 3rd TV, I have another home built machine in a small ITX case.

I used a $15 MCE remote on one of them, and for the others, I got this neat little device from flirc.tv. There is also remote control software that works well on a smart phone, but I found that I don't care for this kind of remote. I like real buttons. If you have a Samsung TV (and others) that support HDMI CEC it's possible for one to control the other thorugh this interface. I haven't tried it however.

The backend communicates to all the front ends over my CAT 5 network. I did take the hard step and pull cables throughout the house. It might work wirelessly, but OTA broadcasts use a huge amount of bandwidth. If you let the system transcode the recordings to a more efficient compression codec, you can probably stream these over the air.

hmm. PC's at every TV. Low end or not that can be pretty expense. I wonder if Roku has a channel that picks up MythTV (I already have one for netflix & hulu)?

There is a Roku channel that can be setup to view recorded programs from Myth. It requires you to setup a transcoding job to change the codec that is compatible with the Roku. I don't think it works with LiveTV.

That is correct - I use the roku channel and it won't do live tv, and all tv has to be transcoded into mp4 that you want to appear. I do this on some programs that I want to show up on the roku - and for some shows I actually customized a script so it hardcuts the commericals out automatically (it detects them in mythtv, and then the transcode hard cuts them out).

You can find used pcs on ebay cheap - the one frontend cost me $100 shipped with the graphics card that can output hdmi and svideo (I actually use the svideo)... so in the end, it isn't too much. As for power usage, that frontend is setup to auto hibernate after 1.5 hours of non use from the main screen (while paused, it will stay on)... and also it is tied to a harmony remote, so when I turn off the TV, it runs a script that hibernates the pc, and on power up, it turns it back on.

WDLive will now stream live tv, and can use a usb tuner to do so as well (and record a show, if you want).

Myth uses DLNA as well, so if you have any device that does that, that works.

I live in Mocksville, so I get both GSO and Charlotte from one antenna, favoring Charlotte. The only channel that doesn't come in well from Charlotte is 46... once this transfer with Fox happens, I think I will have to reaim the antenna and favor GSO (which 2, 8, and 12 come in spotty during weather)... or put up a second antenna and just make one tuner dedicated to GSO or Charlotte... but I'd rather not - it is easier having all the tuners see everthing.

46 is a full power 1000kw signal, but they use a side mounted antenna. I would hope they would eventually top mount their digital antenna to improve their coverage and take better advantage of that tall tower. But they may be on hold until the FCC decides about channel reallocation. And WCNC also had a permit to top mount and increase power, but that has not yet happened either. But meanwhile, perhaps if you add a stronger antenna such as a 91XG, then maybe you could have better results. And a good preamp.

If you combine 2 antennas, they usually have to be the exact same type of antenna and have the exact same length coax cable going into a reverse splitter. Otherwise they can interfere with each other and cause dropouts of certain channels. And I believe Winegard may make special signal combiners if you check Solid Signal.

If you use multiple antennas in a vertical or horizontal stacking array for receiving certain signals in the same direction than yes, other wise if they are directional antennas in different directions than no.

In theory yes. In practice the results are extremely unpredictable. This is because almost all antennas have side lobes and even back lobes for reception. This includes even very directional antennas with substantial reflectors. It's probably not as much of an issue, if you live some distance from the transmitters, but here in Charlotte, which there are numerous full power transmitters in several directions, I've found that every antenna I've put up can receive stations from a different direction. (though not optimal) it also is a big issue if you have large trees nearby.

It can be done, but I wouldn't want to rely on it to work all the time. You could improve your chances by understanding the reception characteristics of your antenna and by using some filtering. Unfortunately the proper specific filtering canl drive up the expense, considerably.

This is why I didn't pursue antenna combining and instead went with software switching.

In most parts of Charlotte, you should be able to find a sweet spot between the Dallas and Newell towers. It's probably WHKY, WUNG, and WTVI that may be problematic. And not to mention SCETV from Rock Hill. And I would think something like a Clearstream 2, DB4, or 4221 would be ideal for the major channels from both tower locations. It's just WHKY and public TV that may require a separate antenna depending upon location.

It's not hard to do if you have a clear weather day and no breeze. But the problem inside of Charlotte is multipath. Once the wind starts blowing along with rain, ti really does a number on digital TV. (In the old days I remember suffering from a lot of ghosting) It's not much fun if you have a program that you wish to watch or record. It makes having a unidirectional antenna or a more directional one using it's lobes a difficult in Charlotte. Because of the trees and buildings the only way that I could see to avoid it with a single antenna is to put it on a tower that clears the trees. Unfortunately I can't do this where I live. (nor do I really want to)

The only way that I could figure out how to fix it, was to go to smaller directional antennas and point them at specific farms or stations.

I remember in the analog days, in Concord, I always had to deal with ghosting on WSOC and WCCB. And WBTV would suffer from static and interference. That's why analog cable could help give you a "perfect picture" relative to analog at that time. Today digital is better, but ghosting now manifests itself in the form of multipath, which must be dealt with to receive a stable picture. And fortunately WBTV moved to UHF, so it is no longer plagued by the static of VHF interference.

Yeah I once had a small portable BW TV with a built in rabbit ear. I was living on the 9th floor at one of the dorms at UNCC and it was practically impossible to pick up WSOC due to the ghosting. It's surprising that it was so bad that high up. The only thing I could figure is they might have still been using their transmission tower on N. Tryon in front of their studio and the signal was bouncing off the 40 story NCNB building in downtown and ruining reception to the immediate North. Cablevision in those days was a huge improvement even right in town.

Back in the days before local broadcast stations went 24/7, I remember WSOC would always mention their tower location as being in Newell, NC during the station signoff each night. I have memory of this going back to 1979/1980 when WSOC made these announcements at signoff each night. Before that time, I have no idea. And I also don't know what year WSOC may have moved their transmission tower from the location in front of their studio to the close-by location in Newell.

They run a Station ID announcement every night around 3:30am stating the tower location in Newell, NC and broadcast frequency 34.

WSOC-TV has always transmitted its television signal from the Newell tower. The tower in front of the station was WSOC-AM (930) and has taken down by Hugo in 1989.

Ahh I guess my theory was wrong about why I couldn't receive WSOC from UNCc.

That was probably severe multipath or ghosting for being so close to the tower. Which makes me wonder how digital reception is over there now.

That is one way of saving money on tower removable!

Not when it falls on the building......

That is what they made insurance for!

I noticed last night (and confirmed this morning) that Charlotte's TVGOS program listings end at 4:00 AM on Wednesday, 2/27/13. This is the first time I've ever had less than a full week's program guide on my CM-7000PAL DVR.

Bummer! I was hoping that Charlotte would wait until the April 1st deadline to pull the plug on TVGOS. Dropping down to PSIP will be like going from a Chevy to a Yugo.