OT: Who Wants HD? J6P? Comcast? Rupert Murdoch? FCC?

The cutoff date is for analog broadcasts; it's not about HDTV, it's about DTV. The primary purpose is for the government to make some money by auctioning off RF spectrum. And, politics being what it is, I'm sure many industries which stand to profit from forcing consumers to buy or lease new equipment paid their congressional representatives to get this pushed through.

Well, it is not really an HD cut off, it is an analog cut off.
They don't have to go hd, they have to go digital. Digital != HD, but hopefull by 2009 most material will be HD.

I want it. I gave up on my 5504 to have it. I love that I can get a free OTA perfect signal without paying my cable company a dime.

I officially made the switch to HD a while ago and haven't looked back. Most of my TV watching is done on a 43" Pioneer Elite plasma or a 60" Sony SXRD. The difference between HD and SD on these sets is night and day. For the time being, my three 50xx's are still in use, but I hardly ever watch shows on them. At this point, the Replays are used mostly for IVS or as a backup in case one of my shows fails to record in HD. My HD recording needs are met by two E* 622's and a Moto 6412. This allows me to record six HD shows at once. Obviously, I miss the cool features and reliability of the Replays, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Give me HD or give me death!

I want what I want and I want it now.

I want HD and I want the stations in my area to broadcast at their full strength NOW instead of waiting until they pull the plug on their analog signals. A ChannelMaster 7777 and numerous antenna tweaks later and I've only made small improvements. I don't like not getting HD versions of all the channels I already can receive analog. Being UHF for HD versions is part of the problem, but I've found the FCC data which shows their output levels.

I haven't given up Replay, since I feed HD downverted to a Replay. Compared to how poorly snow gets digitized, dropouts are much more tolerable.
Disappointments? Yeah, there are a few, but those are from the particular TV I chose, an Olevia. (It was a heck of a bargain, has a great picture, and a great warranty.) The data is already being transmitted for every HD receiver to have a program guide; the maufacturers just don't choose to make it a feature. Giving up Guideplus+ has been hard, especially for my wife. It was nice to press one button to know what's on and what's coming up. The best solution now is to cycle through the inputs to Replay's guide. (Yet another feature disappointment with the Olevia, no discrete input selection and no way to skip the ones not in use.)

Nothing you can't solve with GaAsFET and a stack of Jaycars.

Hey karnac can you provide us with a hypothetical (equivalent) zip for that cornfield of yours?

Just curious what you are up against.

Ever since that original accurian misadventure *flipflopped* the ReplayTV experience yet again, I've been on a crash course. I've nailed down an extra pair of full markets including essentially peanut power @ 75 miles out. The primary benefit is that I continue to have *full* bitrate HD alternatives available (so far -- knock on wood) in the ever increasing face of poorly executed multicasting.

The Syntax-Brillian Olevia TV's are very interesting. They have several similar models that use different video/de-interlacing chipsets, features (and no doubt, performance) differ by chipset brand. Prices have been falling, but I'm waiting for cheaper 1080p displays. Anyway, if you go to the website and check out the downloads, you'll find that most features of the TV can be directly controlled via RS-232 (of course, someone has to write the controlling software), and firmware can be upgraded via USB (if I recall its interfaces correctly).

I'll give you a hint:
Boilers, not Hoosiers

DTV query for "somewhere near" the glorious mile of farmland between me and the horrific development steamrolling my way


I've already downloaded the latest firmware and no difference in the features available. 537H, which has the "better" chipset, as far as picture quality has been reported. No plans to go Blu-Ray or use it as a monitor, so 1080p wasn't even on my horizon.

I want HD and I want to be able to record, edit, archive, and burn to optical media- including my paid sub encrypted HD channels!

But you can't get a lot of other channels OTA that a cable or satellite company can provide. HD or not.

My Linksys/Cisco Skype VOIP phone is way better than my cellphone. I hate cell quality.

You're right, but we just have the cheap limited-basic comcast cable... So there really is no difference for me.

I download from tv-torrents if there is any show that we don't get... like Psych, Angela's Eyes, Robin Hood.

"somewhere near" two dozen miles from *all* of a top 25 DMA?

Of course no stopping the steamroller.

So which digital channels are giving you trouble?

Depending on the nearness of "near" you should be able to get WISH-DT with bunny ears and everything else with a silver sensor. Unless you have massive local obstruction or adjacent and/or co-channel interference of some kind.

In the digital landscape, 1000kW ERP (1000 feet AGL) is close to full power. For a contour radius of 60 miles upper UHF. Using a 7777 from your near exurban cornfield may well overload. On the other hand I need to sight 70 miles to a comparable market which is providing my best quality HD. I *must* use carefully tweaked arrays utilizing Titan preamps to maintain lock.

Depending on your LOS, FORT WAYNE could be an alternative shot? As well as anything closer... if not really worth the effort or rotation. The only problem with BLOOMINGTON is that it looks like it may be behind INDY which gets into overload problems trying to *see* through there.

I recommend watching Engineering an Empire from History and Man vs. Wild, I Shouldn't be Alive, Survivorman, and Everest:Beyond the Limit from Discovery. These cannot be rented or bought on DVD that I know of.

I haven't checked the others, but Survivorman is available on DVD.

I want HD. Just hooked up with a great deal from AT&T/Dish. Free Dish for a year! With what I was paying Comcast per month for full blown Premium, with the savings I'll make over the next year, I'm going to be able to buy a nice 42" Samsung plasma I've been eyeing and will STILL have a couple hundred dollars left over. I have a 65" Mitsubishi Diamond HDTV, and witnessed the OTA HD broadcast in my area. I about fell out of my chair! I plan to function the same way Gweenprose does, recording in HD, and using my replays to backup any programs I may have miss, in down converted HD. Even downconverted HD rocks on Replay. I'll also use the replay for poopli and to record other channels that aren't broadcasting in HD right now. Once you go HD, you can never go back!

How did you get the Dish free for 1 year? I can go for that.

It's not a massive obstruction, but it is an FM tower directly between me and the DTV towers on Indy's north side. It's right at 2.5 miles away. I've looked it up and it's only a 2 kW station, but it still manages to block all other FM signals while driving by. (I used to drive by it every morning to work, which was a minute of non-FCC-mandated censoring of Bob&Tom. I've since moved a few miles north and only drive by on my way to Indy or church.)

My next option is to snatch up a tower that shows up in the paper's "free" section on occasion. My antenna is currently roof-mounted. It points along the electrical wires feeding my house. Moving the antenna to a tower would help that situation, as well.

That situation with WBBM-DT is just insane. This in the 3rd largest DMA in the country. That's a significant chunk of 3,455,020 households (desiring so) needing to pay some provider to see CBS HD. And too many of those aren't getting the real deal even so.

I'm sure I could swing it OTA somehow if I were in that position, but unlikely it would be 100%. And if there is one of the majors I couldn't do without in full HD it's CBS.

The analog may be a mess but digital is even worse. There is just an awful lot of people unable to keep a lock on 2.1 on 3. Especially in that kind of environment. The lower side of lower VHF is proving (in practice) worse for digital transmission even than anticipated. Who has 12 foot wide rabbit ears anyway?

I mean besides icecow.

Karnac the only FM station I'm seeing (on the air) *somewhere near* (anywhere near) those mysterious coordinates you provided is WJCY. Only 470 watts ERP @ 57 meters. I did a flyby over that area with the hybrid google earth view and found the big clunky tower something like a mile south of East Union right off 31. Do you think it's same one? A fascinating view you should check it out. And zoom all the way in on the East Union Cemetery while you are there. The overall area is really attractive and BTW looks quite perfect for digital TV reception to Indy.

If that's the FM tower I can't see it having much significant impact on anything miles away. It might overload the CM7777 if you have some monster VHF Yagi aimed directly at it with full gain but I tend to believe that's unlikely if that station is within it's license @ 475 Watts (.475kW) I have perhaps 1000kW ERP of cumulative VHF (that's a ton) and probably 1.5 times that much UHF on a full tower a few miles from my arrays... and it's certainly (my biggest) problem. But I'm able to deal with it and use all the Titan 2 preamps needed. Of course I preamp everything separately even though the Titans are dual capable. I use "separate" mode and terminate the unused input, narrows the bands in question as much as I can. Then I combine everything back together in various ways inside using UVSJs with variable attenuators on each leg of a combiner. That way I can carefully balance each combination. I tried 7777s either in wide mode or with something on each input. It worked that way but not nearly as well as what I'm doing now for my most critical digitals.

I could see that FM tower potentially impacting VHF and possibly overly amped lower UHF, which you could easily diagnose by viewing (comparable) analog. I'm kind of curious what WJCY is doing with all those microwave dishes on that tower. Perpaps you are in the line of fire? But you surely can work around it. Where are you having dropouts? UHF or VHF? Which channels? And what antennas have you already tried? Is it the same for all tuners?

The free tower should be a nice project. But of course get everything mostly tweaked out before you put it up.

"Somewhere near" is a bit further north and west of the coordinates. I actually used to live within the WCJY polar plot when I lived in Cicero. (10 years ago)
I can't indicate exactly where I live or the little green men will catch me without my tinfoil hat on and suck my brains out. Once my brains are all sucked out, I'll be rooting for IU and voting liberal.