OTA noob: what do I do?

[jostenmeat]

Oops, I doubled posted instead of edited.

I didn't quite understand your advice regarding orientation, but the directions said to have the shorter elements point towards the signal. I take that to mean that in the photo below, the upper right part is pointed towards the local HD antenna. I didn't use a compass, but guesstimated from the aforementioned sites, and my own orientation here. I'm guessing +/-5 degrees accuracy, but maybe worse I suppose. Oh, the "elements" are the things that fold out, all those bars, IOW.

I wonder if a mast would do anything to help out, rather than being propped on floor, with one side slightly propped higher on piece of wood. The ones at Radio Shack are either 5 or 10 ft, both being too tall.

oh, btw, there was a set of instructions that had a humorous title, for outdoor install: "Follow these rules and live". lol

Cheers.

 

[bhodge]

I didn't quite understand your advice regarding orientation, but the directions said to have the shorter elements point towards the signal.

yes, this is the same. If you point the short end of the elements towards the tower than that places them in the same plane as the broadcast signal. By doing this you end up with what I said (which yes is a bit more confusing, sorry )..the shorter elements are connected to rods that branch out..which cause the wide length. This needs to be perpendicular to the signal, which will be when pointing the elements which are attached directly at the signal.

Eh, don't worry too much about it, you will know if its working or not when you tune your stations, if it doesnt tune, rotate the antenna and repeat...see simple

I wonder if a mast would do anything to help out, rather than being propped on floor, with one side slightly propped higher on piece of wood.

You should be fine, the longer mast is to reach higher altitude to increase the probability of obtaining a strong signal. The lower the antenna the higher the probability that the signal has lost some intensity by traveling through objects. Since you are in the attic already, the only need for additional height would be if you lived in a valley or there were tall obstructions around your house/neighborhood.

oh, btw, there was a set of instructions that had a humorous title, for outdoor install: "Follow these rules and live". lol

Years ago I went camping with a bunch of friends, it was suppose to be rough weather so I borrowed my sisters pop up camper. When we got there, it was a down pour so we hurried to setup camp. Well one of my friends didn't unlatch one side of the camper and started to crank it up. This caused one of the pulleys to break and therefore one corner would not stay up on its own. So I fashioned a quick fix, but to install it had to stand on top of the truck to hold the camper corner up while I placed a metal rod into place. Lightening struck, not sure where relative to me but was enough to send a shock that made me start to twitch and fell off the truck.

Good times

 

[jostenmeat]

Hey bhodge, I know you want to know, and I'll tell you, I think this is the best quality of TV I might have ever seen. I don't get too many channels that look good (HD), so far that I have seen. I get around 80 channels! A whole, whole bunch of foreign stuff.

Have a mini-review mostly typed up on the tuner, I think I'll go post it at the reviews subforum here.

Thanks again for holding my hand with this purchase, install, and general education.

 

[bhodge]

Hey bhodge, I know you want to know, and I'll tell you, I think this is the best quality of TV I might have ever seen. I don't get too many channels that look good (HD), so far that I have seen. I get around 80 channels! A whole, whole bunch of foreign stuff.

Wow thats a lot of channels. Depending on where you live you might be getting repeat stations, but from different cities. They will play the same programming during prime time hours but News it will be different (obviously) and for open programming, the syndicated stuff is up to the local network.

My parents live in dallas and they have a lot of independent spanish stations.

For HD, keep in mind that while digital gives the station the ability to transmit the amount of information needed for HD, not all stations will broadcast it and even the ones that do typically only have HD programming for the major shows (local News, prime time, and high end talk shows) because the shows themselves have to upgrade their cameras to get the full encoding. But even with that said, the digital quality is still a ton better than previous analog broadcast AND SD content on cable/satellite.

Glad to hear you like it, sounds like the time, effort, and money will be worth it...unless it makes you a couch potato . And just think, no more money out of pocket to watch TV I look forward to your review.

 

[jostenmeat]

Wow thats a lot of channels.

My parents live in dallas and they have a lot of independent spanish stations.

I have at least two Chinese, two Korean, Japanese, Persian (I think it is), Italian, Vietnamese (I think it is) who knows how many Mexican, but maybe the best looking of ALL is one the Mexican stations. I know I'm missing some there. Jewelry station. Um . . . anyways . . .

Glad to hear you like it, sounds like the time, effort, and money will be worth it...unless it makes you a couch potato . And just think, no more money out of pocket to watch TV I look forward to your review.

I don't think so. It's just going to be for special occasion stuff, and sports, I think. Or, I hope.

Part of me does wonder if I should've gone with Tivo, but then that would make a couch potato if I did use it a lot. Whatever. Review is coming momentarily, rather quite dry, just a list of some details really.

 

[jostenmeat]

What makes for an inconsistent signal?

I had people over for dinner tonight, watching some Olympics for a bit, and it stutters and freezes. Sometimes it will be smooth for a couple of minutes or longer, and then sometimes it stays bad for a while.

Late last night, it looked great. All of the other channels right now look great.

Weird. With the menu, when it's bad, I can see it jumping back and forth between 1 bar to 6 bars (7 being best).

Is this something RF grounding would help? It seems unlikely. Is this simply the fault of the carrier, or what is it? Hmrz. Thanks.

 

[Swerd]

What makes for an inconsistent signal?

I had people over for dinner tonight, watching some Olympics for a bit, and it stutters and freezes. Sometimes it will be smooth for a couple of minutes or longer, and then sometimes it stays bad for a while.

Late last night, it looked great. All of the other channels right now look great.

Weird. With the menu, when it's bad, I can see it jumping back and forth between 1 bar to 6 bars (7 being best).

Is this something RF grounding would help? It seems unlikely. Is this simply the fault of the carrier, or what is it? Hmrz. Thanks.

Try aiming the antenna a bit differently. I don't know about your tuner, but most HDTVs have a built-in signal strength meter that tells you, for a given station, when you have the strongest signal. Use that as a guide while adjusting the direction of your antenna. It helps if one person adjusts the antenna and another person watches the TV while talking to each other by cell phone.

Also, I read in one of your earlier posts that you have the antenna propped up a bit. I've always seen antennas mounted with the long horizontal bar level. See if level works better than propped up. If you don't want to mount it on a mast, try using rope and hang it from a rafter.

 

[audiofox]

What makes for an inconsistent signal?

I had people over for dinner tonight, watching some Olympics for a bit, and it stutters and freezes. Sometimes it will be smooth for a couple of minutes or longer, and then sometimes it stays bad for a while.

Late last night, it looked great. All of the other channels right now look great.

Weird. With the menu, when it's bad, I can see it jumping back and forth between 1 bar to 6 bars (7 being best).

Is this something RF grounding would help? It seems unlikely. Is this simply the fault of the carrier, or what is it? Hmrz. Thanks.

It could be insufficient gain or incorrect pointing or even a ground loop generating random noise, although since you observed that the other channels work and thus have adequate SNR, that seems unlikely. My guess is it is the feed from the source to the local transmitter (ie, Vancouver-to-geo satellite-to-local Rx antenna) , which is dependent on the signal quality between the originating uplink signal at the Olympic site to the satellite and from the satellite down to the local broadcast receiving antenna. If it is infrequent and does not correlate with any other possible signal degradations at your end, AND if it happens on other channels at random times, my vote would be one of the signla paths comprising the upstream feed.

 

[jostenmeat]

Try aiming the antenna a bit differently. I don't know about your tuner, but most HDTVs have a built-in signal strength meter that tells you, for a given station, when you have the strongest signal. Use that as a guide while adjusting the direction of your antenna. It helps if one person adjusts the antenna and another person watches the TV while talking to each other by cell phone.

Yelling should work just fine, hehe. The "menu" I spoke of has that signal strength meter. When it's going good, it's at 6/7. Last night at times, however, it was jumping back and forth from minimum to 6 bars, pretty frequently, but only on NBC.

Also, I read in one of your earlier posts that you have the antenna propped up a bit. I've always seen antennas mounted with the long horizontal bar level. See if level works better than propped up. If you don't want to mount it on a mast, try using rope and hang it from a rafter.

I am guessing audiofox's thoughts are the likely culprit, but I will use your advice to see if I can fine tune it some more. Thanks a lot, Swerd!

It could be insufficient gain or incorrect pointing or even a ground loop generating random noise, although since you observed that the other channels work and thus have adequate SNR, that seems unlikely. My guess is it is the feed from the source to the local transmitter (ie, Vancouver-to-geo satellite-to-local Rx antenna) , which is dependent on the signal quality between the originating uplink signal at the Olympic site to the satellite and from the satellite down to the local broadcast receiving antenna. If it is infrequent and does not correlate with any other possible signal degradations at your end, AND if it happens on other channels at random times, my vote would be one of the signla paths comprising the upstream feed.

Thanks, audiofox, I was wondering about something like what you're talking about. I guess the signal does have to come from Canada, originally, but then . . . the events I'm watching are pre-recorded (day events). Hm.

I would have hoped that for something more important like the Olympic games, that the signal be good. However, I don't remember any issues with any other channel. Last night, CBS, local HD news, and any other SD channels looked perfect.

 

[jostenmeat]

I just wanted to report, that ever since the couple of days of having a skittish signal with NBC, it's been perfect since. Watching the Winter Games on the big screen has been extremely enjoyable.

The ePvision tuner is great too. I'm sure it must be an OTA thing, but tuning in to a different channel, or functions like "previous channel", or tuning into any favorite, or even having the "info" on the program all happen just about instantaneously.

I have my mute button programmed to the tuner, because I'm still somewhat attracted to the auto-CC function as engaged, but this means that using the volume button (receiver) doesn't un-mute. That's the latest.

There aren't many things that are free anymore, but highest quality high definition feeds OTA is one of them, and that's pretty darn cool. Who knew? Plug in a radio shack antenna, and good to go, lol.

 

[bhodge]

Sorry to hear you had issues with your signal quality, my email started spamming AH emails and i've been traveling with work so haven't been keeping up.

From time to time (hopefully not often) you will find that your signal gets weak or is even undetectable...there are a lot of factors in play but once you have found a strong singal, I doubt you will have to worry about moving the antenna if it gets weak, its more likely external factors (station using lower power for some reason, weather, some other electrostatic interference) and it will come back at some point. I lost 2 of my stations for the first time in 3 years last night due to a weather storm but they were back up and running this morning.

 

[jostenmeat]

No worries, and thanks. I'm very happy with this OTA setup. There are a couple of rather educational channels too.

 

[Swerd]

No worries, and thanks. I'm very happy with this OTA setup. There are a couple of rather educational channels too.

I'm real glad to hear that's working well for you . TV reception over the air (and FM radio as well) varies a lot depending on location, elevation, and terrain. So when someone asks about it on a forum, I never know what conditions they have. Did you end up with an amplified or passive antenna?

I'm still impressed with how good HDTVs look when fed an uncompressed HD signal. I wonder how many people blame poor picture quality on various types and brands of TVs, when their problem may actually be poor signal quality. With cable or satellite you have no control over that and it costs a lot extra for their HD programming. And, with few exceptions, you are getting a compromised HD signal.

Even if you pay someone to install an antenna with rotor and amplifier on your roof, you pay much less than half the yearly cost of cable. And you pay it only once .

 

[jostenmeat]

Yes, thanks Swerd, and I agree.

I've long maintained that the weak link in a great pic is the source material. After all, we have had HDTVs around for quite a bit longer than bluray, AFAIK. Many people bought HDTVs just to feed it standard def, upconverted or not.

I do, once in a while, second guess myself for not buying a Tivo, or some sort of recording device. However, living for years w/o programming, it's not really a big deal. I think the lifetime subscription on the single tivo device would have costed me roughly $250 more.

edit: forgot to answer your question. The antenna is an unamplified antler. The model is mid-sized among the manufacturer's selection, but is the smallest among them that RS carries. It's still pretty darn big IMO, at roughly 7ft long.

I did play around, yelling to friend to look for the signal strength, and it didn't do much, I think, however, I do get 6 out of 7 strength consistently, which is pretty good for how far I am from the main HD antenna/source.

 

[lsiberian]

I'm real glad to hear that's working well for you . TV reception over the air (and FM radio as well) varies a lot depending on location, elevation, and terrain. So when someone asks about it on a forum, I never know what conditions they have. Did you end up with an amplified or passive antenna?

I'm still impressed with how good HDTVs look when fed an uncompressed HD signal. I wonder how many people blame poor picture quality on various types and brands of TVs, when their problem may actually be poor signal quality. With cable or satellite you have no control over that and it costs a lot extra for their HD programming. And, with few exceptions, you are getting a compromised HD signal.

Even if you pay someone to install an antenna with rotor and amplifier on your roof, you pay much less than half the yearly cost of cable. And you pay it only once .

As I always say source matters more than anything else. LCD screens look much better with the OTA signal IMO. Sports from CBS are probably the best quality thing we've got in these parts. Their shows look great too.