Washington, DC / Baltimore, MD - HDTV - Page 356

Both Wheel and Jeopardy! were in SD last night on WJLA, but the Leon Harris news special at 8pm (Pre-empting a repeat of Wipeout) was in HD!

I thought Wipeout was new?

I know it ran earlier in the summer. They had ads for it at every movie I saw at the theater.

Not for us. Kudos to WJLA for picking the timeslot of ABC's only summer hit to air some time-wasting news special on healthcare reform.

They're going to air that episode of Wipeout again, don't worry. It's on at like 2am some evening. Check your Tivo season pass. Probably won't be in HD tho.

Anybody getting Channel Available Shortly on FOX-HD in Montgomery County? First episode of Fringe and I'm watching in SD...so lame

Fringe was good tonight!

Following-up on my earlier posts, WJLA was unable to locate a suitable UHF channel in and around Washington, DC. WJLA is now focused on solving, if at all possible, the myriad of reception problems that have arisen on high-band VHF channels since the DTV transition.

As part of this effort, WJLA recently received temporary authority from the FCC to increase WJLA's ERP. The FCC approved this increase to allow WJLA to conduct testing to determine if the resulting stronger signals overcome any of the reception problems.

We encourage all to conduct their own tests and to share your results on this page. Your work will be instrumental in determining whether the FCC should approve power increases for high-band VHF stations.

- Robert

So are you saying the power increase has now been implemented?

- Trip

Yes, 52kw ERP

Awesome news. I hope it helps. I hope you can convince sister station WSET down here to do a power boost too if their move back to VHF is as problematic as VHF moves have been elsewhere.

- Trip

Dr. Oz is in HD on WBAL now. It was SD when I last checked on Monday.

I did yet another rescan. The locals are now at 4.1, 5.1 etc., even without a box. Go figure.
Its about time they did something logical.
J

Robert,
I had a solid signal back in June, 99% on My DISH 612/722 boxes. Today I can't get a lock on your signal at all. Still getting WUSA right around 99%.

WNUV CW54 still has glitches when they show syndicated HD shows. Depending on what equipment you are using, the show will blink to a screen that say "off air" for a split second. I am currently watching House of Payne while this is occurring. I am using a USDTV HD box OTA. This is the only one that reacts this way.

Not seeing any change here. Very similar signal as Ch. 9 like before.

Wizards Announce TV Schedule

The Washington Wizards and Comcast SportsNet released their 2009-2010 broadcast schedule today. It features all 82 regular season games plus three preseason games, including 66 on Comcast SportsNet, 14 on CSN+, one on the Comcast Network and 15 national television appearances. Fifty-two games will be in high definition.

The preseason games to be broadcast are Oct. 9 vs. Dallas (in high definition), Oct. 14 at Cleveland and Oct. 20 at Philadelphia. The regular season begins Oct. 27 at Dallas.

Seven games will be televised on ESPN, one on TNT and eight on NBA-TV.

ESPN: Nov. 4 vs. Miami, Nov. 18 vs. Cleveland, Nov. 27 at Miami, Dec. 18 at Golden State, March 7 at Boston and April 7 at Orlando

TNT: Dec. 10 vs. Boston

NBA-TV: Nov. 21 at San Antonio, Nov. 28 vs. Charlotte, Dec. 26 at Minnesota, Dec. 28 at Memphis, Jan. 18 vs. Portland, Feb. 22 vs. Chicago and Mar. 13 vs. Orlando

For the complete local broadcast schedule visit www.csnwashington.com.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/wiz...wizardsinsider

Solid signal in Southern York County, PA (east of I-83). I do get dropouts during certian weather events. But generally very good reception.

Marcus,

No complete schedule on the above link?!

I'm picking up 7-1 OTA for the first time since the transition. No breakup at all.

As of today, WJLA is completely unusable from here in Elkridge, MD. It's gotten a great deal worse. Almost impossible to get a signal lock at all. Haven't made any changes at all on this end, just tried to watch RTN and decided to poke my head over here when I couldn't. It's not amplifier overload, WUSA 9 and all UHF channels are fine. Ideas?

edit: Hooked a tuner directly to the antenna, same issue. WUSA is 100% perfect right now, WJLA has a very strong signal but only a 35% S/N ratio and will not lock. It was an 85-90% S/N ratio previously (after adding a low VHF filter). Interestingly enough, a homemade UHF Yagi antenna with extreme negative gain on VHF 7 I have can lock the channel for brief periods of time. My guess at this point is extreme multipath (that Yagi I made locks 11 and 13 from the back without any issue too - I love that antenna). I almost feel bad for saying this, but from my location I think 52kW is actually too much! lol

Will try an attenuator at the antenna, even if it's just academic to do so. I don't need WUSA tonight for anything!

edit 2: Attenuator = no love. It's a variable 0-20dB attenuator. WUSA disappears completely about 25% on the knob, WJLA stays at 100% strength and a really bad S/N ratio until I'm almost at the maximum 20dB, then it disappears. Using a Y5-7-13 in an attic. Gotta be multipath that wasn't there yesterday. Again, I realize this is academic at best, and I've already decided to go with a FiOS Locals Only package (Sunday!!!) to solve my DTV reception issues with WJLA, WUSA, WBAL and WJZ.

Not worried about it for my own purposes. Just trying to provide meaningful feedback while I still have the equipment to do so in place. eBay firesale starts Monday! LOL.

Solid signal for 7 now in Annapolis MD near Annapolis High School. Much stronger than 9, which I still struggle with. To round out the VHF in our area, 11 and 13 from Baltimore are fine. Prior to today, I struggled with 7 and 9 -- now only 9.

http://www.nba.com/wizards/news/tvschedule_090917.html

Thanks for the early feedback. Please keep it coming.

I can now receive channel 7 (WJLA) with an EZ-HD antenna http://www.dennysantennaservice.com/...v_Antenna.html (same as an RCA ANT751) leaning against the wall in a second-floor bedroom, connected to a Channel Master CM 7777 preamp and a Zenith DTT901 digital converter box. My zip code is 21046.

I still can't receive channel 9 (WUSA) with the same setup.

(I can still receive channels 7 and 9 with my rooftop (old) CM 4228 antenna and CM 7777 preamp.)

WJLA went from 99% strength and zero dropouts to 75-80% strength with the occasional dropout here in College Park. WUSA is still at 99% strength. I'm using a RCA ANT751 antenna and have tried swapping between Winegard HDP-269 and AP8700 pre-amps. But I still get dropouts either way now.

I believe that WJLA gave me 100% signal before. Now it is at 85% at all antenna angles from 0 t0 260 degrees. It drops to as low as 75% as I rotate the attic 4228 antenna to 360 degrees. The performance at 85% is excellent, but I never saw the insensitivity to antenna angle before. I get good signals from all the channels except WUBT, which doesn't go above 5% at any angle.
This was my report of tests about 9:30 AM. Now at 2:00 PM the signal is at 100% instead of 85%, and still not sensitive to antenna angle.

Robert, thank you and WJLA for putting forth the effort on this. I really think you guys are doing the broadcast TV community a major service by testing out increased VHF power for DTV.

WJLA has been mostly unwatchable for the last few days for me here in Fredericksburg. It was very solid before. My tuner (HDHomerun) shows a "Signal Quality" alternating between 0% and 40% and a "Symbol Quality" at a constant 0%. If possible please return it to the way it was now that the new shows are starting up.

Thursday night there was a glitch with Comcast in my area. Or at least the feed going to my house. It happened at around 8:10 PM. I was watching Bones in HD and for about a minute or so the channel changed to something else and then eventually it went back to Bones. At the same time I was taping Weekend Update on NBC. On my tape at about the same time it went from NBC to some local county feed for a minute or so and then returned back to NBC.

It was very weird. Has anyone else experienced something similar?