Chicago, IL - OTA - Page 376

Last night (Thursday), while channel surfing, I noticed a scroll on WCPX saying they would be off the air from about 12:00-5:30AM. Was this something to do with the antenna work on SearsWillis Tower?

I was just wondering if it could be something as simple as moving cables around or transmitter room changes. Would they actually be working on the antennas in the middle of the night? They usually do that stuff on a weekend morning.

Engineers prefer to do certain work during the overnight hours, since there's usually few OTA viewers at night, than during the day. The same can be said for radio too. While it's dark outside, there's usually some kind of light available on the Sears Tower, & it might not be as dark up there. I'd rather have the disruption during the overnight hours than during the day, & miss a program I'd like to watch.

When calling ABC 7's main number on an unrelated matter, the recording stated that "We have recently upgraded our ABC 7 signal" and instructing the caller to do a re-scan now. The person I was calling was in another department and had no idea if they had lit up the new antenna. My signal strength is the same as before, but then I always had full bars on RF 44.

Why is WLS identifying itself as "WLS-TV / WLS-DT Chicago?" The official FCC database has it listed as "WLS-TV" even though it is an ATSC station.
http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?call=WLS&city=&state=

For that matter, why are any stations listed as "-DT?" It seems like a legacy distinguisher left from the time when there was analog and digital TV signals for the same station. It's just not technically correct to use -DT now from what I can tell.

I see stations can have -CA, -TV, -LP, and -CD.
Edited by swiat - 10/9/12 at 3:08pm

Every station was supposed to choose a suffix, back around the time of the analog shutdown.
Unfortunately, many stations did not inform their marketing and art departments.
Same thing here in SLC....some have old call letters on some stuff (my station, included ).

Ken is right, stations got to chose one or the other for their FCC License or legal i.d. But, I don't think there's any non compliance issue if they promote -DT or -TV contrary to their selection, as long as their Legal i.d. is compliant per FCC Rules. Many Low Power or Class A stations are promoting themselves as -TV without peril as long as their Legal i.d. says -LP or -CA or however FCC has them licensed.

So it really makes no sense at all to use the suffix if it is not being enforced nor is there a consistent scheme. It seems the call letters and city at the +/- 5 mins of the hour are sufficient just like radio.

I've seen the only ID be at 20 minutes after the hour.

It used to be within 2 minutes of the hour for normal programming, within 5 for live programming with unscheduled breaks, and whenever possible for speeches/concerts that can't be interrupted. That went away a while ago.

hey guys I was looking into getting an antenna for my roof top went to tvfool and got this http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d2df9cb93c6acf9

realistically what channels should i expect to get and what is a good antenna to buy. any help is appreciated

You're line of sight to at least part of the Willis Tower, so that's good. (Not sure why some of the Willis Tower stations are line of sight and the others are single edge. )

Any good directional antenna mounted on the Northwest side of your house pointing at the Willis Tower "should" get you most of the Willis Tower stations. WBBM is on 12, so you need an antenna that does High-VHF and UHF. Channel Master and Winegard seem to be two of the most liked antennas. I'll leave it to you to find specific models. I don't think you'll need an amplifier, but I can't know for sure.

Other than that, get the antenna as high as possible and don't shoot through trees, buildings or hills if you can help it.

Hope this helps.

Thanks cg i will look into those two models

Can anybody tell me if WLS-7 in Chicago up to full power with thier new antenna?
I am down in Kankakee and before the switch, WLS was my most reliable signal, now I can't get it at all.
I have done a re-scan and everything else comes in.
I have contacted WLS but have not recieved a reply.
Thanks

While I don't know if WLS is up to full power yet on rf 44, I can tell you their rf44 signal is maxing out at 100% on my signal meter. I am about 55 miles west of downtown.

Gilbert,
Have you moved out by the Mississippi? lol.

Thanks guys. I'm not sure what happened. 7 and 44 show no signal at all. CBS, NBC, WGN, WTTW, WCIU, FOX, and the rest all come in great.

Here are before and after shots of ch44's signal in Woodstock. I'd have thought there'd be a bigger difference.
The before picture, on the left, was taken Oct 8,2012.
The after shot, on the right, was taken today, Oct 23, 2012.

I'm just comparing relative amplitudes in relation to the adjacent signals. My spectrum analyser isnt good enough to really give absolute measurements.

On RF7 or on RF44?  I'm less than nine miles from Hancock or Willis, yet RF44 still comes in more weakly and with more of the occasional pixelation than RF7 on the window-positioned antenna that connects to my DVR.  They're about equally good through the roof antenna, and the two TVs with set-top antennas I can't say, as we watch them so rarely that, well, they get the set-top antennas.

Edit: duh, just thought of checking Gilbert's stickies at the start of the topic.  He was talking about RF44, which he has now noted as "1 mw" [sic -- but no doubt he meant 1 MW].

Perhaps I can reposition the antenna to get RF44 better.

The funny thing is that when I bought my DTVPal DVR 2 1/2 years ago, it insisted on resolving the conflict of two 7.1's, 7.2's, and 7.3's by keeping RF7 on internal 7 and bumping RF44 to internal 70.  There's TVGOS guide info for virtual 7 but only PSIP guide info for virtual 70, and at the time I was getting RF44 better than RF7 (though not as well as RF44, let alone RF7, has come in since I changed antennas), so I went through a lot of gyrations to get those transposed, because I wanted TVGOS for the channel I'd be recording.  A few months ago, when I noticed that RF7 was consistently coming in better than RF44, I had to tease the DVR no end to put them back the other way (every time I deleted them, no matter which order I put them back in, RF44 would end up on internal 7 and RF7 on internal 70, just the way I'd had it for a couple of years but didn't want it any more) so that RF7 would get the position with TVGOS info.  Now, unless RF7 goes dark, it seems I'm going to have to try transposing them a third time.
 
Edited by dattier - 10/23/12 at 9:35am

I re-scaned again today and I get the same results. No WLS. Everything else comes in great. I can't get WLS since the switch over. Can aybody throw some ideas out that I can look into?

What are you using for a tuner? TV? or Converter box?
There are some devices that just won't give up the old information until you perform a factory reset. Dig down in the menus and find something that indicates initial setup or factory reset. Try that and then rescan.........

We had a switch in Milwaukee with channel 18 in 2009 (digital was on RF 61 - now on 18) and ran into this several times.

I am using a Samsung SIR-T151. I connected the cable from the antenna to my TV, scaned for stations and I can get WLS perfectly. So the problem that I am having is with the SIR-T151. I think it is about 12 years old so it will probaly go.

Thank you. The problem with that method is that WLS isn't the only channel I record from, most of the others come in better with the antenna than a paper clip (yes, I know you aren't joking), and I can't always be there to swap between the antenna's coax and the paper clip every time I want the DVR to change channels.  Moreover, there are times when I want its two tuners to record from different channels simultaneously, and very likely one might be WLS while the other might be one that can't be received through a paper clip.  Also, the DVR is in a room where the reception bites, and the antenna is connected through a length of RG6 through an old cable-company hole to another room, where there's a window facing downtown, but the coax's path through that other room is difficult to access, so I'd actually have to be detaching the antenna lead and inserting the paper clip (or vice versa) in the inaccessible area of the next room, not right at the DVR's input jack.

Thus, the answer for me is to record both WLS signals, or, when I need one of the DVR's tuners to record another channel, to record the better WLS signal.  Lately RF7 has come in better than RF44 for me, and the power increase on RF44 hasn't changed that.
 

On an unrelated note ...

Sunday I had to do a factory reset on my DTVPal DVR, and ever since then I've been unable to get TVGOS data.  Has there been a problem with WBBM's transmission of it, or did I just fail to get the DVR's settings right when I reselected my preferences?  (In case of the latter, I've also asked this from that perspective on the thread for the device in the HDTV Recorders forum.)

 

Yes, that's a 1st generation tuner. We're on no less than the 6th gen. by now, and there's quite a huge difference in sensitivity and multipath handling.

Edited by Rammitinski - 10/25/12 at 12:05am

 

Is there a way to do a hard reboot?

 

Try that, and set the zipcode to "00000" for a day or so before re-configuring the TVGOS setup.

 

That's what you usually had to do back in the analog days.