Philadelphia, PA - OTA - Page 7

brent i'm all to familiar with the numbers..went insane over winter trying to find a good spot for 29 so i could watch '24' in HD. 400 bucks of labor on the roof found me a rock solid signal...until the past week or so with 57 (which was always perfect even indoors). I can understand why fox and WB would be bad, but since 57 is bad day or night, that has to be a problem there. The 29 thing just was noticed yesterday. See trees are in full bloom and i doubt it's anything like that. And actually last time i checked signal fox 29 was up into the high 80s on my HDtivo..it was never that high even in winter when i first put up the antenna!

and no rain recently so cant even say the connections are getting wet.

I did get the same snowy pic of channel 6 on my TV when i had the DB8 just hooked up to the tv...so maybe you can get it in

here's the FCC list for channel selections since it seems an appropriate time to post it again

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_publi...-05-2649A2.pdf

Im gonna be in trouble when 6 moves down. But it's 3 years away. And nbc should be even better with the 34/35 post (i forget which they decided on)

now i'm getting a bit worried. Watched 2 hours hells kitchen last night and had 3 breakups on fox. I had zero since the db8 was put up 8 months ago. (except for 2 daytime glitches last week on shows i normally dont even watch). People on here had reported 57 having problems so I didnt think it was my rig.

is there any chance an overheated amp could be causing problems? I have the leviton amp from home depot and it worked fine (until now?). It's on the floor of my attic and i do have an attic fan and ridge vent but i'm sure it's still plenty warm up there.

But if it is the amp, all channels should be affected right? That's what makes me believe it is isn't the amp. Then again, there's not a lot of OTA on during the summer so until fall season starts, i can't really get a good handle on the exact parameters.

and if it isn't the amp, i guess i'll have to pay someone to venture on the roof again...but i'm hoping it doesn't come to that.

edit came home and checked every connection..all are tight (can't get on roof though). HDtivo shows 57 is in the 80s...yet you can switch to live TV and watch the pixels and it's bad..really unwatchable....i watched the meter for a good 5 minutes and it didnt dip into a bad range at all (that was fun). The amp wasn't so hot i couldnt touch it and hold my hand there no problem. So i doubt it's the amp.

better clear up before supernatural starts in a month. Everyone else still having problems with 57 too?

When do they plan the analog cut off and/or the switch from UHF digital to VHF digital?

On February 17, 2009 analog (or NTSC) broadcasts are scheduled to end. By that date broadcasters must use only a digital (or ATSC) format. Most DTV stations are now using UHF but some are using, or will continue to use, VHF. In Philadelphia, WPVI-DT has applied to use VHF Channel 6 but all other stations seem to be staying in UHF. Currently, all Philadelphia broadcasters are simulataneously broadcasting in ATSC and NTSC.

Cable and dish users will notice no difference on the cutoff date. Only those using off-air reception are affected. They will need to buy an external converter if they want to continue to use their NTSC-tuner televisions.

This deadline could of course change, but so far it seems broadcasters and manufacturers are moving toward this date.

Everyone else still having 57 problems? I just cant see why after all these months i'd have a problem unless it's at the source. Watched some of the game in HD and still had the problem

I have no problems with UPN57 or KYW3, it's everything else thats iffy at 60 miles out

Bad news indeed for me. my wife would GREATLY appreciate some help as watching directvs signal is getting on her nerves

can anyone help me troubleshoot why only on 57 do I have reproduceable (ie always there) problems? I dont know if it would show up on a picture but i'll try to take one. Here goes the description meanwhile. At regular intervals...you'd never have to watch more than 4-5 min but it could be as frequent as every 15 seconds...what happens is, for example a baseball game, around the batters body, it gets ...sorta pixely or almost ghosty. Is is NOT the entire picture. When watching a sit com i dont know how it chooses where to go bad but it's never the entire pic. Just certain areas. Audio is pretty good even though the errors, but it does drop out sometimes.

It can't be a signal strength issue because before my DB8 was outside, i had those problems and the picture i have no looks nothing like what it did when i had low signal.

A few posts up I have noted the days and channels of minor problems I had on 29 (always my weakest but rock solid until recently) and 3 and 57 have always been my strongest. So I have no idea why 57 is persistently unwatchable and even that 3 had the minor glitches. I dont count 12-1 in my problems because i've always gotten it only at night, am 40 miles out, and really haven't watched much recently.

The only object I see in my way is a very tall and wide tree 200 ft away and it hasn't been a problem until now so I dont know why it would all of a sudden be a problem. If it was growth, why wouldnt the very weak 29 and 17 be as bad as the very strong 57?

I have 50 ft of wire from the DB8 to a leviton amp sitting in the attic then 75 ft going down to my crawlspace. Identical pictures on both HDtivo so it cant be the units. I'm not using diplexors but do have a splitter feeding the stacked tivos.

suggestions? Can multipath only affect a tiny portion of a picture. I've watched the signal on 57 on my HDtivo meter (fun) and it at no point went low for the 4-5 min i watched it.

I cursed myself. Last night, watched 2 hours of fox. There were 'whole screen' pixels which I do recognize as low signal, and hadn't seen them before. however, I cant check signal while tivo is recording. But, it still doesn't explain why CW (my superstrong station even in attic) is floundering. I guess I will email 57

Can someone comment on the scenario where a tree 200ft away 'did' grow a lot this year? It's height and width already totally 'blocked' the line of sight from day one of install. The installer said when the leaves grew in it would be a problem, but i'm sure the tree had full leaves by july (though i'm no tree expert). That's what puzzles me.

I'm over 60 miles out and was able to find a sweet spot with my antenna to get everything relatively reliable (about 80% of the time) except WTXF-DT and WHYY-DT but the last week or so it's been all good days-bad days. I'm sure it will pass.

last night during the game on 6.1 every single time after a play and the espn logo graphic was shown, the graphic caused major pixelation, sometimes to the point that it was 5 seconds until the pic came back.

does the fact that it happened every time mean anything (antenna vs network issue)?

checked signal strengths this morning (6.1 was 90 on hdtivo) and every channel is fine and i've even been watching 57.1, a major problem for me, without it's usually interruptions.

I saw this on non-OTA from WPVI last night too, along with other quality issues from their feed (or ESPN's source for the simulcast), so it's most likely the network.

ok cool it's not me with abc

Interesting idea...I never heard of rain being better for OTA reception but I am far from an expert.. every ota channel has been perfect for me January to approximately July (obviously everything from winter to extreme heat). However these 3 weeks of no rain previous to this week may lend the possibility of your humidity explanation indeed.

If so, then let it rain! I am well aware that OTA is much more reliable than DTVs signal and was sure hoping for another great TV season this fall since winter/spring was so good.

I will definitely start tracking the weather.

this morning cw was totally gone, even cbs was horrible...i was able to check signal on both tv tuner and on both tivos. Definitely an antenna problem. CW was down in the 20s and cbs in the 40s. On a whim, i went into the attic and flipped the FM trap off the leviton amp. My wife yelled up that it's perfect now.

But that doesnt necessarily mean anything (i think). I turned the trap back on and the channels were all still perfect. Of course when you are actually flipping the switch it momentarily goes out but thats a function of the switch?

I do recall the trap was off for the first few months of install. I forget why, but i had to turn it on then things were fine until a few weeks ago.

is there anything seasonable about FM trap usage?

Not sure about the FM trap but reception is definately affected by the season/atomospheric conditions. My problem recently is not so much with the lack of signal as it is with multipathing. I suspect that the FM trap may be helping you with reducing multipathing as well but who knows.

my wife said 57-1 was good the past 2 nights but fox was still giving me about 4 'pixel outs' every hour or so. I'd hate to think it's a loose antenna and have to pay someone to check it out. I'm gonna wait it out and see if when seasons change it gets any different

4 picture break ups on both Prison Break and Vanished last night on Comcast Garden State. Just like last week. Missed several lines of dialogue. There maybe more break ups but I FF through commercials. So what I can gather is Comcast gets the HD signal OTA and I'm experiencing the same problems that those who just get HD OTA are having.

jack interesting....i'm back to thinking my OTA is fine and it's fox and 'cw' that were screwing around. But those darn low signals the other morning still nag at me.

3.1 OTA is not there now...I checked the other philly OTA HD channels..they all come in fine

cbs was always very strong...so not to get something is 'impossible'

unrelated... but on 17-1 (SD program) it has a blue bar about 1/2 inch thick on the right side of the SD pic. in other words, between the Pic and the 'bar'

As of this post time KYW is just fine for me--strenght 67 on Dish 622.

Yup, I think the Fox issue is an OTA issue...I live in the Lehigh Valley...and I have 2 cable providers, RCN and Service Electric. The breakups during Prison Break and Vanished were in the same exact spot from both providers, so to me it sounds like it's an OTA issue (I'm not sure if RCN and SecTV share antennas though)...and it's extremely annoying to be missing dialogue during a show...I noticed about 4-5 breakups in Prison Break each lasting 2-3 seconds each.

I emailed Fox but I'm afraid it's never going to get to the "right" person to get this solved...do we have a Fox guy here by chance?

And to reply to someone above. I only get UPN57 on SecTV but I watched both repeat episodes of Veronica Mars last night and both were glitch free (other than the fubared DD2.0 audio that has "clicks" in it because it's being flagged wrong-it's actually DD5.1 audio, but they are flagging and encoding it DD2.0).

-Derek

btw, the email address for Fox29 HDTV issues is: engineering@fox29.com

-Derek-

There were 5 pixelations during Bones tonight. I watched it live, only 1 of them was during the actual show, the other 4 pixelations were during commercials. So far there's been 2 during Justice, one was right in the beginning of the show during the credit intro. And 1 during a commercial break.

-Derek-

4 hrs later...all same probs...how can i lose just 3.1?

also i have same prob as post 209 exactly with fox