Mary Jane, if you don't have an accurate magnetic compass, then use TV Fools Online Map option with your address, select satellite option on the google map image and enable "Show lines pointing to each transmitter" (below the map) Zoom in, place the pointer where your antenna is actually located on your property and then use the lines pointing to the transmitters to identify nearby land marks that you could use to aim your antenna. The 4228 has a pretty narrow beam width so you will have to be as accurate as possible. Good luck.

OK thanks RamKat for the info,

I'm new to this so the more advice the better lol...

I'll go check that out.
Mary-Jane

Ideally someone else is inside telling you the signal strength of a station you want on your tv while you turn the antenna in order to find an optimal position... Use your own ceebee, phone method if yelling doesn't work :)
You'd typically tune to your hardest to get station and be under the signal strength option for that channel

Or get a USB ATSC tuner and a laptop the you could monitor signal strength directly ;) At least with the digital signal strength indicators the yelling could be quantified (if you don't have a portable device)

Thanks guys,

I do have a set of two way radios for the communication I won't have to yell.
Will be better on the neighbours ears lol...

OK I think I get it now.

Thanks everyone for your help:)

Mary-Jane

canuck22, an extra thing you can check is to attenuate the signal before your tuner by using a 4-way splitter before your tuner. The 7777 preamp does amplify well, but sometimes it's too much if you're feeding to only 1 tuner; that tuner may be overloading. It really depends on the tuner you have, it happened to me only with 1 specific tuner, the Hauppauge 2250. The 4-way splitter trick is easy to do. Using 2 2-way splitters would do the same thing as a single 4-way for attenuation.
I tried attenuating the signal, and it seemed to make the hiccups worse on CBS. Fox seems to have smoothed out ... even when I removed the two 2-way splitters from the path. Odd. So now CBS is the only offender, even with a signal strength in the upper 80's and quality hovering around 80%.

What's strange is that the sharper the image, the more likely it is to have these hiccups. For example, a news feed that doesn't seem to be overly sharp (upconverted SD?) doesn't seem to have these hiccups, but a network show that's clearly HD does.

I think my next step is to test with a different tuner, in case it's my iMac that's having a hard time rendering. When the iMac is doing exports (re-encoding for Apple TV2), the CPU and memory are definitely getting stressed, and it *seems* to exacerbate the problem. That might be a contributing factor. The reason I'm not totally convinced that *is* the problem is that other stations that are coming in perfectly (CBC, SRC, City, PBSHD ...) do not experience this symptom. Stands to reason that if the iMac struggles with CBS, it would also struggle with these other channels. Unless there's something about the signal or frequency that makes CBS more difficult.

As I mentioned, next step is to borrow a neighbour's TV that has a built-in ATSC tuner to test, after which I might try to tilt my antenna up very slightly to see if that helps.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

canuck22, CBS and Fox are on the same channel. You should be getting problems on both at the same time. What you may be looking at is some macroblocking on CBS. This would impact fast-moving sections of the screen on CBS, and you would be less likely to see it on Fox.

If it's a reception problem, you'd have more problem with middle of the day shows and less trouble at night when reception is better. The whole image and/or sound would be affected. If it's macroblocking, only fast moving scenes would have an issue.

canuck22, CBS and Fox are on the same channel. You should be getting problems on both at the same time. What you may be looking at is some macroblocking on CBS. This would impact fast-moving sections of the screen on CBS, and you would be less likely to see it on Fox.

If it's a reception problem, you'd have more problem with middle of the day shows and less trouble at night when reception is better. The whole image and/or sound would be affected. If it's macroblocking, only fast moving scenes would have an issue.
Flavoie - thanks for the ongoing help!!!

Audio never seems to have any hiccups, so you may be right. I've been trying to keep an eye on it relative to time of day, but no overwhelming trend has surfaced ... some shows tend to have it occur a lot more than others, and it seems to occur on both slow moving scenes (eg, news) as well as fast moving scenes. It may be more frequent on fast moving scenes - I'll pay attention to that, and see if there's a trend.

I've also tried recording in the background. IOW, I let the iMac record a show without rendering the image. Still have the issue in my saved eyeTV show & exported AppleTV2 show.

I don't know much about what causes macroblocking ... I'll dig into it.

Thx again!!!

Just tried with a more powerful computer (MBP i7 w/8G of RAM), and ... same issue. So it's not the processor & RAM that's at fault. And I'm seeing some issues with Fox again during the day. So I'm guessing it's something with the signal. I might try playing with the direction to resolve this particular issue - maybe the tree is in the way.

And I still want to test with a built-in ATSC tuner if I can borrow a neighbour's TV :-)

I am receiving the WWNY stations (CBS & Fox) reasonably well. Picture is beautiful, but I get a quasi-regular frame freeze / flicker ... maybe once every 10 to 30 seconds. No audio blip, just video.
City is doing the same thing. And City doesn't seem to have a guide.
I was also getting strange dropouts on CBS/Fox RF18 but since the TV season ended, I haven't been recording these channels.

I would describe my problem somewhat differently: the picture and sound would be fine, then it would be as if the whole bottom half of a frame would be missed (top half was fine), and then the picture would recover afterwards. Sound was fine. Signal level was good. Does this describe what you've been getting? If so, then perhaps we can compare notes, as I did try a few things.

But I didn't have this problem with CITY.

Hello all, I am a newbie here and am quite overwhelmed by all the information on this site...it is good but it is (to me) quite an overload.

I have tried to read many of the posts by Stampeder as well as in the FAQs for newbies, installation and service thread, indoor antennae thread, city bylaws thread, this thread and the west Ottawa Nepean thread, the anteanna chart, TVfool, etc. Basically I was up very late last night going from link to link with lots of good info but so much that I've kind of forgotten everything I've read and feel like I'm starting from scratch so please bear with me.

Basically I have cancelled my cable a couple months ago in the anticipation of watching the very little TV that I do watch by using laptop and HDMI. That is also presenting problems (as I'm not very technically savy) and simply trying to find a comedy online that I wanted to empty my brain on proved impossible without downloading some programs and other impediments...ok I will stop whining...

So basically I would like to get setup with an antenna to catch locals like CBC, CTV, GLOBAL, CITY, TVO, OMNI etc. Would REALLY love to get PBS but not sure if it will be possible?? So a few questions for starters:

1) I am generally surrounded by large apartment bldgs on all sides, so I would be seeking an antenna for which that is not an issue. Advice appreciated.
2) I thinnk rooftop is not feasible as it would require professional installation and maintainence due to high and very sloped roof. So I'm thinking indoor or attic mount or ground mount in backyard. So for the ground mount I do not have much yard space (townhome) and am wondering about how feasible that really would be - bldg blockage, low height. An indoor would be ideal but I'm assuming I would only get camp fortune tower and maybe HC....and again there I have a big appartment building blocking the straight line of sight to CF. I presume the indoor would NOT get me PBS is this correct? So attic mount might be an option....and suggestions for that category?
3) Where in Ottawa (preferably west end) can I go to buy antennae and get technical advice? If I was to have one professionally installed any suggestions as to find a qualithy installer? (I understand that advertising is not allowed in this thread and appreciate that concern...but at least if some guiding options could be provided I would be most appreciative.

I apologize as I'm usually much more coherent and concise in my questions but I've just spent too much time online being frustrated lately. There were other questions that I thought of last night as I was scanning previous posts and threads but it is all a blur now and escapes me.

Here is my TVfool report.
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d001b4a192e10de

I see some of you have been very diligent and helpful which gives me hope that you will be able to help me get on the right track and forgive my rather disorganized approach for my first post here.

Much thanks in advance - I look forward to learning the basics at least.

regards
MA

I was also getting strange dropouts on CBS/Fox RF18 but since the TV season ended, I haven't been recording these channels.

I would describe my problem somewhat differently: the picture and sound would be fine, then it would be as if the whole bottom half of a frame would be missed (top half was fine), and then the picture would recover afterwards. Sound was fine. Signal level was good. Does this describe what you've been getting? If so, then perhaps we can compare notes, as I did try a few things.

But I didn't have this problem with CITY.
Interesting ... so tough to properly describe these types of symptoms, isn't it?

I can't say that I've seen a top half / bottom half split. It's either been the whole screen pausing for an extra few frames, and then catching up to the audio that generally has no hiccup ... with some pixelation happening *usually* on a face that moves or other high movement area.

It's not the computer per say. Tested that. It also comes and goes on different channels, though CBS pretty much always experiences the symptom. Fox is off and on, and City has it sometimes. Though I think that for City, it's a signal strength problem because my antenna is pointed south towards the US, so I'm getting it from the back.

CBC is clean clean clean. I'm hoping to borrow a neighbour's TV this weekend sometime to see what a regular ATSC does with the signal. I'm also going to try tilting the antenna up ever so slightly. Flavoie said that could help.

Well, I got a friend's TV in to test the signal. TV was clean, whereas the feed that came in via EyeTV was not. The computer's not at fault because I've tested another more powerful machine. That leaves the software.

My guess is that there's something about how certain image glitches come through on those particular channels that the software doesn't handle well. Will be digging into the eyeTV forums to see if I can find more info.

MikeAbraham,

If you are surrounded by buildings you are in a very unpredictable situation so it is really difficult to tell you what will work and what not. You may or may not sit with a difficult multipath situation where you have a risk of ghosting etc and the strongest signal may not come from the direction of the towers, but being reflected off a building. If I am you I would get a fairy directional antenna and RG6 cable and just start to play around. To get going fast without having to fork out a lot of money I would start by getting a 4 bay knock off from Factorydirect on Merivale, not the best but better than a Youtube coathanger antenna. They sometimes also have some RG6 pre-fit with F- connectors. Pick a strong analog channel above channel 14 (inclusive) from each of the towers and try different locations on your property. Slowly rotate the antenna to see where you are getting the best signal from. Once you have determined the best direction and location for those analog channels try to let the TV scan for the digital channels. Then check the VHF channels. You may have to combine another antenna for the VHF channels. You will learn along the way. That store on Merivale also has some other knock off antennas, but I don't have any experience with how good or bad they are. Forget about PBS. Hope this helps.

Mike, here's a simple solution considering PBS is out of reach, forget it it's too weak of a signal to attempt to get it. Install in the attic 2 antennas if you want Global which is at channel 6. Winegard HD8800 for UHF (second choice cm4221hd) -my real second choice for UHF would be the cm4228hd but you'd have to drill out rivets and reassemble it in the attic with extra hardware because it typically doesn't fit an attic trap. Then a vip302sr for VHF as the 2nd antenna. Merge these 2 antennas using a cm7777 preamp.

There's something called a universal swivel base mount which you put on a truss in the top of your attic and then hang a mast on it vertically. When you have a vertical mast hanging from the top it's easy to mount your antenna(s) on it. Keep the UHF antenna on top and the VHF on the bottom if using the same mast.

The 8800 would need to be assembled in the attic otherwise it will not fit the attic trap...

yeah, 8 bay would probably be better to get rid of any potential ghost images because it is even more directional, I was just concerned about the size of an 8 bay, as you have pointed out. Personally I don't think gain will be the issue here though.

Thanks Flavoie.....I guess the first thing I have to ask is why is PBS out of reach? Is it due to my location or some other factor based on my situation? Did you have a look at my TV fool report?

I think prior to sussing out any antennae possibilities I should first determine what channels I can get.

So if you could let me know why PBS is out and what channels you believe I would get. I guess essentially what I'm trying to do is narrow down the options based on "bang for the buck"....if I can get 3-4 stations with just an indoor antenna and only a couple more with outdoor or attic I might just stick with indoor...all depends on the potential channels.

Much thanks for your help !
MA

Thanks also Ramkat - I see you also say PBS is a no-go. hmmmmm. You also mention a 2-antenna setup (one for the VHF)

Which channels are broadcasting VHF...I'm a bit confused about CBC digital...is it 4 (VHF) or 25 UHF? If it is UHF then it would appear to me that the only VHF channel I might be interested in is Global (not sure what CHCH is), and maybe CTV (is 13 able to be picked up on UHF antenna)?

Thanks again

MA

Mike, wnpi PBS is worse than -10db noise margin (NM) in your tvfool. At that point you cannot get the channel reliably from the roof with a good preamp.

Post transition your vhfs are global,src,ctv at 6,9,13.
You'll want a VHF antenna if you want global because UHF might be ok at channel 13 but not at all for ch 6.