Washington, DC / Baltimore, MD - HDTV - Page 252

WUSA now frozen for over an hour - what the heck is going on over there (it's not a CBS problem as the NFL Game Mix feed was ok).

Stations have no control over what game is shown. The great NFL masters control that.

As for the other problems, from what I gather, there were some serious transponder problems of one type or another and in the excitement a Dolby decoder locked up killing some of the audio on HD and so they had to take the SD feed or it would have been a silent movie albeit in color.

Most of what happened was out of their control, they damage limited as best as they could.

Here's an FCC page that has coverage maps that show coverage area gain/loss of each channel from the DTV transition: http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/markets/

Click on Baltimore or Washington to see the maps. It's also interesting to see the network maps, which show the gain or loss over the entire country.

Mark

Mark, thanks for posting the link. These are different than the subset of maps of digital stations with significant changes in coverage which was discussed in the Final DTV allotment sticky thread: http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/markets/report2.html.

Stations in our market with notable changes in the modeled coverage are WBAL 11, WMAR 2, WUTB 24 and WETA 26 (net coverage increase BTW), WFPT 62, WTTG 5. But some of us are of the opinion that the loss for the VHF stations moving to UHF is overstated because much of the modeled loss can be made up with high gain UHF antennas (provided terrain is not severely blocking the signal path).

PS. The FCC comparision map for WPXW Ion 66 is pretty messed up. Even at the original 110 kW allotment in NW DC, why would the station lose all the viewers to to NE? WPXW-DT 66 will take over WUSA-DT's UHF 34 transmitter and antenna and has been granted it's application to run at 1000 kW.

Now you know how those of us on the Baltimore end have felt about having the Redskins on WBFF virtually every week.

Of course, as someone else already pointed out, it's not WUSA's (or WBFF's) fault. And if Snyder and Bisciotti ever get their way, we will be one market for NFL purposes and those few times that the stations actually get to opt out of coverage of the team at the opposite end of the parkway will be gone.

Boy, yesterday was a day for DTV problems. During the Ravens game I was recording, CBS must have lost the HD feed as we spent much of the first half in SD. Then my signal from WRC for the Chargers game kept breaking up even though I had the antenna pointed right at it.

Good times...

D.C. is considered a secondary market by the NFL for the Ravens. WUSA has no control over it. If you're really looking for a long-term solution your only option right now D*'s Sunday Ticket (or hanging out a place that has it).

Because the much more powerful signals of WHUT-DT 33 and WDCA-DT 35 would stomp on its tiny signal in those areas.

- Trip

WUTB 24 is the one that stands out to me the most. They lose a lot of coverage to the south in Prince George's County. Won't really notice until next summer when WDCA shows a Nats game instead of Smackdown on a Friday night.

Hi all. I'm a complete newbie to this digital world, and my introductory experience this weekend has left me baffled. I bought a new Sony Bravia (old TV is 10 yrs old) and did an autoprogram. Everything worked fine--I was picking up great reception on digital and analog stations...until it hit 47.1 (WMDO), and then the picture started flashing on and off, the TV wouldn't take any commands (except power off) from the remote, it wouldn't go to any other channels, or anything. I spent an hour and a half on the phone w/ the Sony tech people, we re-booted the TV several times, etc. Nothing helped, and it actually got worse, so I couldn't even get the other stations any more--just the WMDO flashing on and off. I brought the TV back and got a new one....and the very first autoprogram froze up on WMDO. So now I'm back to my old TV, wondering what I'll do on Feb. 17.

I live on Capitol Hill in DC and get GREAT analog reception with rabbit ears (I'm on the top floor of the highest building in the neighborhood). Does anyone have ANY ideas what might be happening and how I can solve the problem? I really don't want to have to get cable when I live in a place with such good OTA reception.

Thanks for any help...I'm completely lost on this one.

WMDO still has a problem with their PSIP decoder. (Ever since they went digital ;3 or so months ago) I can't understand why they haven't addressed the problem yet????? On my tuners the channel number displayed rapidly changes from channel 1 to channel 47. There is nothing wrong with the tuner on your TV(s).

Do you watch any of the analog VHF channels now, or are you only viewing the digital ones?

Why would the 100 kW UHF 33 signal of WHUT-DT and 500 kW UHF 35 signal of WDCA-DT stomp that much on then alloted 110 kW UHF 34 for WPXW-DT? Not that much of a dB difference between them. Yes, WHUT-DT filed a maximization request to increase to 1000 kW post-transition and WDCA-DT for 950 kW, but of the three, only WPXW-DT has so far been granted it's maximization request for 1000 kW on UHF 34. Even the directional antenna pattern they have for WPXW-DT on it's original 110 kW allotment still don't account for the orange triangles marking loss of reception to the east and north. I think there was a messed up parameter entry in the computation for the WPXW-DT post-transition comparison map.

[quote= There is nothing wrong with the tuner on your TV(s).[/QUOTE]

Except that I can't watch TV. I can't change off the WMDO channel, I can't program the TV to skip over it. The TV either sticks on WMDO, or it shuts itself down, then starts up again only to freeze on the same station again.

Except for the firmware in the tuner in the Sony Bravia TV. A bad PSIP data field should not cause well written & tested tuner firmware to crash. Since people are getting WMDO-LD even with the bad channel # displayed, one solution may be to get a different brand TV or a (SD only) converter box to use with the Sony TV until WMDO-LD fixes their PSIP data. Has anyone contacted the station about the problem? Or contacted the FCC - which might get WMDO's attention?

My tuners detect WMDO-LD on VHF 8 from Sterling, but I have not been able to get a lock on the station with the upper VHF antenna in the attic. So I have not seen this bad PSIP problem myself.

A UVSJ filter will solve the problem temporarily until WMDO gets it's act together.(You can borrow mine) It will work as long as you don't watch any analog VHF channels now. Someone else may have a better solution; but this will work.

Can you get into the menu? If you can, go in and erase that channel! There should be a way to do that in there someplace.

Good luck!

.

tried that. once you get to that station on the menu, it tunes that station in, and then I'm back in la-la land where nothing works. I'm especially confused by the fact that the second Bravia never even went through the motions of letting me see other stations before it latched onto WMDO and freaked out. It hooked straight onto that station during the first auto-program run, and then I was stuck.

I'm thinking I like afigatt's suggestion of trying another brand, but if anyone has any other ideas, (thanks, Digital Rules, for the filter idea), I'm 'listening'. this has baffled everyone I know.

The maps were created before the FCC approved the 1000 kW signal they now have approval for.

Because the pattern is directional. Very, very directional. In its weakest nulls (which were north and east), the power was 0.039 kW ERP. That's 39 watts. Compare to even just WHUT's 100 kW, that's more than 34 dB higher than what WPXW-DT would have done on that pattern.

A link to the pattern in question.

- Trip

That's a great TV!! I wouldn't take it back yet. Once you do a scan with the VHF filter (WMDO is actually on VHF-8), you won't need to use the filter unless you do a re-scan. The re-scan shouldn't be necessary until 2-17-09. By then the problem should be fixed.

From their website (http://wfdc.entravision.com/p1253.html) - they don't have their Chief Engineer listed, but here's their General Manager's e-mail address: rguernica@entravision.com

Cheers -

I already took it back. I was pulling my hair out and starting to believe in evil spirits coming across the airwaves and taking over my TV (OK, maybe not, but it was really ticking me off!). Maybe I gave up too fast--didn't know this forum existed, for example--but what do you think the chances are that a different brand wouldn't have the same problem? I'm a gal who likes to have things work when I plug them in--not looking for a project...

LG should work since they are the parent company of Zenith; who makes the DTT-900 & 901 converter boxes that works fine with WMDO. Others her may have suggestions if you aren't interested in the LG brand.

I didn't realize or had forgotten that the antenna pattern that was originally specified for WPXW-DT post-transition was so extremely directional. No wonder WPXW 66 wanted to get the 1000 kW maximization using WUSA-DT's current antenna pattern.

I thought Arlington Comcast was adding Fox News/FX and some other channels to their HD lineup. Can anyone tell me if this is going to happen? If so when?

Thanks

Next Monday, Live with Regis and Kelly goes HD. I'm assuming if WJLA can carry Wheel and Jeopardy in HD, they can carry Live in HD as well?

(Do they air Oprah in HD?)

Thanks for the advice. You all are the first folks I've come across who had a clue about what the problem could be, let alone how to fix it. Thanks for nothing, Sony tech guy....

Need to disconnect antenna while doing this so it cannot tune it.

did that, too. this one is a real stumper.

Ok, so it's not the tuning that sends the Sony out to lunch, but the bad data in the channel table itself. That means your only option is to keep that channel out of the table in the first place.

A workaround in DC prior to 2009-02-18 would be to keep the antenna disconnected until the auto scan passes channel 8, because all the digital channels are currently on UHF. But this will not work once channel 7 and 9 move back to VHF.

More generally, the way to get past PSIP problems is to avoid auto scans altogether and add channels manually. Most TVs and CECBs will add channels to the virtual channel table if you simply tune the RF channel of each desired channel, one by one. With some sets, there’s a menu option to do the same. This is, of course, a pain, and you may have to do a little research to find all the relevant RF channels, but it does work.

TVs and CECBs that do NOT let you add channels manually should definitely be avoided, however. PSIP problems will be a fact of life in the digital era, no matter what happens with WMDO. Anybody who thinks there will never be another PSIP issue after 2009-02-18 is dreaming.

afigatt is absolutely right, of course, that faulty PSIP data should NEVER crash a tuner. But there will always be the possibility of data idiosyncrasies that software engineers haven’t considered, so even if your tuner doesn’t crash today, you can never be sure it won’t crash tomorrow, unless you’ve written and verified the software yourself. The best you can do is insure that your TV or CECB allows manual tuning, to protect yourself against being put completely out of business by one station’s faulty data.

A VHF and UHF combiner with the antenna connected to the UHF input should filter out the VHF signals. There is of course, WWPX-DT Ion 60 on VHF 12 out in Martinsburg, but that may not show up for an antenna in DC anyway. But that fix is only good until WJLA 7, WUSA 9, WBAL 11, WJZ 13 all switch their digital broadcasts to their upper VHF channels after midnight on February 17->18. WMDO-LD needs to fix their PSIP data, but maybe they don't know they have a problem.

As for manual tuning, not all ATSC tuners allow for this. The Zenith DTT901 converter box has a handy menu option to directly select the RF channel and show signal strength. But a 19" Samsung HDTV I have does not allow manual tuning at all from what I can find. OTOH, the older Samsung SIR-T451 ATSC STB does allow manual tuning if you enter a channel number that has not been assigned. There is no industry standard for this - and there should be (to provide for a manual tuning option).