Philadelphia, PA - OTA - Page 3

The pitch isn't too bad on my roof so when I mounted the tripod, I checked the entire roofline. I had the best results toward the back of the roof so that's where I mounted it. I have different results when I change the height on the mast but I've got it pretty narrowed down. I'm going to have to tinker a little more I guess so I can try for all the channels more reliabily but I'm losing hope.

Steve, where are you located? I am 32 miles west of the antenna farm in a town called Elverson. I have a Channel Master 4228 8 bay antenna in the attic. Every channel comes in at 85-90 except for WHYY 12. Before using your pre-amp, what was your signal level for WHYY? What pre-amp are you using?

Thanks
George

I'm 10 miles further than you and when i had my db8 inside, didn't even get ch 12. now that it's outside, it's only 30-40s usually but it's good enough to record most things with maybe only 5% of the show dropping out. I count it as a bonus channel i get 'most' parts of things but would never rely on it 100% from out here. My guess is if you really wanted it, you gotta go to the roof

i'm using a leviton amp from home depot and it works just fine..even better than the preamp the installer wanted to use.

Did you try an amp when your antenna was in the attic? I wish I could put the antenna on the roof, but I live in a townhome community. Legally, I have the right to do it, but it is frowned upon.

Thanks for your help.
George

Yes the amp was needed in the attic too because of my long 125 ft run. Made a huge difference between watchable and not. if you have home depot near you, i'd try it. Even with the antenna outside now, i have the wire/amp running in the attic and so far the cold hasn't bothered it at all. Of course it's a really warm winter.

the installer seemed to think his preamp should have done better than my 'only coax' amp, but results dont lie, at least in my situation.

I think it's worth a try. If it does not work, I can always return it. I'm using a 50' run of quad shield cable. All of the channels come in between 85 - 90 except WHYY. That channel goes between 9 and 14 and I never get a picture.

Thanks again
George

George,

Sorry the the time of the response. I live in East Fallowfield township in Chester county. I think WHYY showed up as a blip on my Directv Receiver. After I installed the preamp, it is solidly locked on 71. I actually get less cut outs with it than I do on WPVI, but I think I have a multipath issue . I am using the Radioshack pre-amp with 30 dB (10 dB variable) gain. My run of cable is pretty long (>100FT) since I go from my attic into my basement to my multiswitch and then across the length of my basement using diplexers. I will be working on cutting additional slack out of my coax run to the basement, and possibly replacing the preamp with a CM one, to see if it makes any difference.

Every other channel I get between 85 and 90, including WTXF. I hope this helps.

Steve

Anyone else have bad reception OTA on the game yesterday? It seems when they went to replay, showed their graphic, that really caused problems with blockiness etc. Then there were a bunch of other times that it just went to hell. Overall not a super deal...but I've never gotten it on any other football game during the year and also watched ABC for over an hour after the game and there was no sign of any problems, so it was definitely the superbowl feed.

That's great information, thanks Steve. It is encouraging to hear from others that are in this area of PA, and can receive WHYY. I will definitely look into pre-amps and give it a shot.

George

P.S. I almost purchased a home in East Fallowfield. The Kings Ranch area is one of the most beautiful country settings I have ever seen.

I noticed a similar thing watching OTA. I wonder what the deal is. I had some instances where it did break up (more so towards the end of the game) but afterwards it was fine.

newsposter,

I saw the same blockiness and freezing during replay. 99% of the game was perfect and I had a very strong signal, so I was hoping it was their feed and not on my end.

Some good plays in that game!

George

I had terrible reception during the game yesterday. I'm only 5 miles from the tower, and never had issues with channel 6, but I had to constantly adjust my antenna yesterday.

Well I can tell you it was NOT ABC. I got constant breakups OTA from WPVI during the Super Bowl. I had to switch to ABC-NY via DTV..... more compressed but no content problems.

They better get their act together before they go all digital.

Does anyone have any idea when we are going to get local news in HD? I thought I saw a brief promo on one of the news channels that it's coming soon, but I didn't catch the detail.

i think 6 has a new helicopter and assume the entire news would be HD because it would look really stupid having your chopper pics better than your station pics

amazingly i can't find any info on google or even wpvi..must be hush hush

I remember seeing a picture of a helicopter when they announce that HD newscast is coming soon. I went through their web site and even googled it, but couldn't find anything. I just emailed them.

Thanks guys, now you jinxed me.

Anyone having issues with WHYY tonight? I am getting everything in rock solid but WHYY is strange. I usually have a signal strength of 71 with little movement, but tonight its like my antenna is pointed in the wrong direction. It just bounces from nothing to maybe 20.

Steve

Anyone have problems with law and order tuesday night? Opening scene had no video, just audio. then the commercials were fine....then the show came back on and was boxed on all 4 sides....then finally it came in full screen. How in the world could they forget to turn on the video for the opening scene? never had that happen before.

Because I live in lower Ocean County I get New York through DirecTv and local Philly OTA, as dumb as this sounds, WABC-DT (NY) has their chopper in HD but nothing else. When the studio is on they have black bars on each side to make the screen 4:3 but when "Chopper HD" is on it's 16:9. It wouldn't suprise me if channel 6 does this for a while as well.

So can one infer it's cheaper to put HD in a moving chopper than a static studio?

just one camera so probably yes.

or heck maybe they threw in the HD with the floormats

Yea, that's what I was thinking: The HD camera probably came with the new chopper!

Anyone else having issues with 12-1 WHYY? All other stations are coming in rock solid 3-1, 6-1/2/3, 10-1/2, 17-1, 23-1/3/4/5, 29-1, and 57-1. 6-1 was coming in pixelated, but then I knocked some snow off my OTA antenna and it's working fine. I'm curious if the problem with 12-1/2 is weather related? I'm using a DirecTV HR10-250 DirecTV with TiVo with a Terk HDTVs square antenna. Any input will be appreciated.

Well I never got 12 until I put the db8 on the roof, and even then it was only maybe a 40 signal tops. But most stuff is 90% watchable for me and yet the national treasure special is much worse (recorded yesterday) with pixels etc. But i'm far from the best person to ask given the poor initial signal.

My problem went away the next day but came back last night. It must have to do with it being very cold out, since there is as much snow on my roof as there was yesterday.

Ah, it's back up now in the high 70's. It must have been related to the snow. Thx.