St. Louis, MO - HDTV - Page 419

Is anyone having reception issues with Channel 5 OTA lately? I live in Creve Coeur with a good rooftop antenna that gives me a solid "100" on channels 2,4,9 and 30 but in the last ten days or so Channel 5 seems to vary from the 70's to upper 90's with occasion dropouts all together. I climbed up the roof and all seems fine. I doubt their megawatt transmitter is failing but I simply see nothing wrong or different on my end.

Only show I've watched on KSDK recently is Meet the Press, but had no issues with it yesterday morning.

It's very random but happens w/o warning. I fear it's on my end but I can't find anything wrong. When it occurs, the other local channels continue to boom in at 100% while channel 5 is cutting in & out.

It might be multipath interference. I have that on Ch 2 once in a while.

Does the back drop of an antenna matter? I am looking at two options for my attic antenna. One is a 4 bay bowtie UHF antenna that I would attach to my chimney stack, the other is a yagi type antenna in the open area on a pole. Both are fine antennas and price isn't a major factor between the two. I think the bowtie antenna is going to be easier to install but I am worried if the brick right behind the antenna is going to do anything to the signal.

It all depends upon where your stations are located in relation to you. The bow tie is probably rather omni-direction and makes sense if the stations are scattered about in different locations on the compass. It's also more prone to multipath. This is most likely my issue. The yagi, I believe, is much more directional and immune to multipath. But for it to work, all stations you wish to receive must lie in the same general direction.

All the stations I want are between 238 to 242 degrees from my house, well within 5 or 6 degrees of each other. I guess I will make sure the yagi can fit in my open space and get it, it seems like the better antenna.

My suggestion is to use a Yagi when you can. They tend to do well at rejecting multi-path.

So which Yagi do you suggest for a Creve Coeur ranch-style house? My Winegard with the 4 bow ties isn't cutting it anymore. How much $$$?

I live near the airport and have multi-path from the planes. I tilted my Channel Master DB2 antenna way back. Not at a 45 degree angle, but tilted pretty good. It seemed to help with most stations being a few degrees from each other and IIRC 30-1 in almost the opposite direction. Placement is important. It is currently in the third (and final spot) on the roof.

Oh and FWIW, I have a Samsung DLP and just replaced the lamp and housing from Schneider's yesterday. It was 4.5 years old with many, many hours on it. I decided against going into the service menu to re-set and check the hours, but I know it had a lot. It's like having a new TV again. But alas, Doug's calibration is gone. The difference in just looking at the the old bulb and new one before I installed it was striking. I took my old one with me and they pointed out a small bulge near the stem. It was also darkening. Thankfully, the price of the lamps has gone down considerably. I replaced it with a genuine Sammy lamp and could have saved some money online, but I could return it hassle free if it didn't work and walked out with what I knew would fit. I just hope everything else holds up.

EDIT: Don't forget to ground the antenna you install.

Mo's experience made me think of how I did this wrong where she did it right. Perhaps you can learn from my mistake.

Only buy original equipment (lamp with the housing included) for your display. A few years ago, I bought a lamp that was the "same" lamp that is used for my display and saved about $150 by purchasing just the lamp and then re-using the housing from the previous lamp. I had no problems installing it and it looked great for the first month or so, but as time wore on, the lamp was frying my light engine because it was producing more heat than the OEM lamp. The light engine had to be replaced and I had to buy a new lamp again.

Others may have had better experience, but I won't purchase another aftermarket lamp. From now on it's OEM only.

I'm glad I don't have to deal with the DLP lamps anymore. I've had a LED Sammy DLP for 3+ years now, and it seems just as bright as new.

I never did swing for a calibration though. I have other priorities these days for that amount of money (i.e. two-channel analog audio).

In St Louis, our broadcast towers are generally stung along Teson Ferry from the St Louis city limits all the way out to northern Jefferson county and will, from CC, form an arc of close to 60°.

A location as close-in as CC often needs the broader beamwidth of a bowtie or a loop antenna unless multi-path becomes the limiting issue.

A Yagi is best suited towards those locations where signals are closely grouped together or when you need to use the Yagi's narrow beamwidth to fight multi-path, often with the aid of a rotor.

Our C2 antennas often work pretty well, but each location really needs to be tried out to see how it goes.

That's exactly why I purchased the Bow Tie. But multipath appears to be killing any reliability. That arc gets much more narrow to about 30 degrees when my only mission is to have reliable reception on 2,4,5,9,11 & 30. Is there any way one could "test drive" a yagi?

Whoa. The light engine? I thought it would fry the ballast. Is the ballast and LE connected? The lamp prices (with the housing) have dropped dramatically to what you though you saved, plus tax. EDIT: The price locally versus online. Believe it or not, some lamps are counterfeit ones.

RaceTripper,
Back when I bought this DLP I had 3 choices: A pricier hot plasma that would leave burn-in from games, a LCD with motion blurring in fast action scenes and poor blacks or a DLP. I realize technology has changed and I like my 32" Sony Bravia LCD in my bedroom. I *really* like my Sammy 50" DLP all over again. It's like a new set. I'm just crossing my fingers that nothing breaks down.

Believe me, I will be depressed the day my DLP quits working and I have to replace it. Mine is a the HL67A750, which has been fantastic, and I just don't like the current choices for that size, technology-wise and price-wise.

I just browsed the Crutchfield description. That looks like a really nice set and no flipping color wheel and big. I bet it's gorgeous. Mine is old by comparison. I got it in January of 2006. But it's the correct size for the short side of the living room.

I keep hoping they'll release a 3D front projector with LED lighting instead of a lamp. Lamps are a royal pain. Of course, they have front projectors with LED illumination, but hopefully they'll make them bright enough to light up a bigger screen.

I'm not sure if they're connected. The guy that repaired it said they had to replace the light engine but didn't mention the ballast. It's a 62" Philips LCoS. I still like it, but I am waiting for it to die so I have an excuse to get a projector since I built a dedicated room :-) (Although I really should wait for the 3d projectors to mature a bit. 3d isn't the main reason I built the room, but I would like to have the ability.)

A quick check on the Philips website has the lamp and housing still going for $280, so still not exactly cheap. I will check Schneider's if/when I decide to replace the lamp that is in it now.

To be honest, I haven't been into home theater that much lately, and haven't sat down to watch a movie in ages. I completely revamped my music listening system last year (mostly vinyl) and that is really more of where my soul is anyway, so I spend most of my free time with that.

Wouldn't happen to know where I could find a nice used Dual 1219 turntable for a client, would you?

I'm afraid not. I bought a new Rega RP3/TTPSU.

You might try Audiogon, although they really screwed up the site since last month, and I haven't seen near the level of traffic as previously. I've been looking for a new preamp & PSU and I just haven't seen new ads for what I want like I did in the past.

Please keep on topic.

Sent PM.

Check with the Audiocircle local circle GAS ~ Gateway Audio Society

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?board=70.0

Well, we could do that and face periods of three or four days with no messages (like earlier this month), but that would be three or four days when your advertisers would get no eyeballs.

Sometimes a little thread drift keeps forums alive.

I can see both sides of this argument. But an occasional drift is not too bad as long as we don't stray into health issues or auto repair. Give the mod a break. That's probably his primary intent anyway.

I guess D* receivers were recently updated to automatically shutdown if not in use for 4 hours. Another thing I noticed with my receiver is that the light that indicates a program is recording no longer lights. Anybody else have this problem, or is this isolated to my receiver?

I disabled the auto shutdown feature. I might put on news while working in my home office, and not touch the remote all day, so I don't want it turnng off after 4 hours. We don't have an issue leaving DVRs on if we aren't watching them.

I had no idea avsforum had an Android app. This is kinda cool (visiting my folks in Phoenix as I type this).