For me here, the benefits far outweigh any negative. No distant stations reliably without it.
Not even ION. Just checked Erie, PA WJET just a bit of a whiff, nothing unusual here.

I decided to take my Mclapp 4 diy antenna on our family ski holday in Ellicotville, NY. I improvised a 16 1/2 inch dipole at the balun in order to have a chance at WBBZ rf7. The chalet that we rented had an unbstructed horizon to the north.The elevation according to my Garmin is 620 metres above sea level!

Here's the tv fool: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d4033995d0fe5c8

(http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d4033995d0fe5c8)

Here are my results with the antenna pointed slightly north north east
Percentages express reliability over three days of widely varying weather conditions (40F rain to 20F snow).

WGRZ 2 100%
WIVB 4 90%
CBLT 5 100%
WKBW 7 90%
CHCH 11 100%
WNED 17 90%
CICA 19 90%
WNLO 23 100%
CBLFT 25 100%
WNYB 26 100%
WUTV 29 90%
CIII 41 one day out of three
OMNI 47 one day out of three
WNY0 49 90%
WBBZ 67 40%
CITY 57 one day out of three

The chalet owner was impressed and very surprised to learn that ota can yield such impressive results.

It impresses me when OTA fans test out reception results while travelling. ;) That's cool...

Has anyone in the Buffalo area been having pixelation problems with CBLT? It always seems to be during the hockey games. The sound never cuts out, but the picture sometimes hiccups. I'm wondering if it's reception or my TV related (47" Vizio). My Dynex upstairs doesn't seem to have that problem (I have a splitter running to both TV's).

buffalofan, I can't say I've noticed anything, but then again I haven't watched every minute of every game. If I do notice anything I'll let ya know here.

don't touch that dial. Bad day for comparisons. You should see how much all the signals are fading tonight.
Must be that unstable air mass that moved in today.

I switched to the NBCSports Network Feed. CBC is completely out for me. First time in a long time. I assumed it was maintenance.

easiest way to rule that out is compare to the other Toronto / Hamilton Stations. They're all gone , u know it's fading.

Guys,.. Check out the Toronto/Hamilton discussions. We are having a extremely bad day here too:(
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=36535&page=120

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but my 47" Vizio seems to be pixelating way too often when I turn it on CBLT. I don't have this problem with any other channel really, even with weaker ones like the Omni's or the CITY so I don't think it's a reception issue The sound isn't affected at all. It's completely continuous. The signal is more than strong. I have a CM 4228 (old version) with a splitter running to another TV upstairs (a cheap 720p Dynex) which doesn't have a problem at all. I thought maybe it was a faulty cable, but I ran the same cable through my tuner on my PC with an HD resolution and there was no pixelation at all

The only thing I can think of, and I could be way off on this, is that CBLT is a 720p resolution channel and the fact that it is a 1080i TV is messing this up. I also tightened the connections in the cable...same problems.

I believe that CBC Toronto is a 1080i broadcast

It seems that some people even within Toronto are having issues with pixelations, so maybe something has changed within their signal that may be affecting some tuners.

haven't watched it all night long, but no pixelation here. a few miles south of you. 23 dB SNR on CBLT and ~ 18.5 dB SNR on TVO. I think TVO and CBLT share an antenna on the CN Tower cause they're so close in frequency, so I like to compare them. CBLT is always a hair better than TVO SNR wise here.
Assuming your TV plays ABC, FOX, ION, MyTv fine which are also 720p broadcasts??

What is ur PC Tuner? Can you get any SNR reading from ur PC based tuner?

Edit: CBC Toronto is 720p, ever since the DTV transition was completed up there.

Info says "720p" on my Vizio TV.

My Tuner is a WinTV HVR 950Q I probably overpaid for at BestBuy at the Walden Galleria in Buffalo (I needed a tuner the same day to record something). I tried messing with some picture settings but nothing really worked.

EDIT: I tried 29 and that was working really well. It's also a lot closer (not that CBLT's signal is a problem at all).

a 950Q will spit out SNR no problem. Grab a free copy of the TSReader Lite Program. http://www.tsreader.com/tsreader/index.html
Lite version has limited capabilities but can come in handy for diagnosing suspect transport issues, etc.

Okay, I have no idea what any of this crap means, but there's a bar saying 15.23 Mbps.

basically to start out, you wanna keep an eye on the error counters,
Continuity Errors, TEI errors and CRC errors...

http://www.tsreader.com/legacy/

look down the page for Stream Issues section for an explanation.
If you can see decent "Quality" Numbers (~ 50% Qual => ~ 15 db SNR, 100% Qual => ~30 dB SNR) , you shouldn't see any errors in the stream, except maybe when ya first tune it up, nut nothing continuous or at a high rate of error.

I think my device is pretty similar to yours in terms of what TSreader reports for signal & quality, but I'd have to double check that again

I know in Linux the 950Q and my device report the same way.

Like in this snippet below, mine reports like this, where Str of 235 dB is actually 23.5 dB SNR. I may have modified the source code of "ATSC_ BDA_Source.dll" on mine to report SNR like this. after running for 11 minutes, 45 seconds there were only 81 continuity errors, likely all when first tuned up, zero TEI errors, and zero sync losses. That would be indicating a good signal.

Continuity errors: 81
TEI errors: 0
Sync Losses: 0
Calculated multiplex rate: 19383360 bps

General Information
Source: ATSC BDA Source
Tuner: Channel 20 (509 Mhz)
Signal: Qual 87% Str 235 dB [Locked]
Network Type: ATSC
Run Time: 000:11:45

If you have a laptop that's easy to move around the house, maybe compare it at all your drop points, see if ya can spot any difference at the various drops.

Correct,.. it is 720p
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=144794

Does the input I chose make a difference? I chose the "Hauppauge ATSC Generic" or something like (I'm at work right now) that because the 950Q wasn't listed. It seemed to read okay. I had about 24 continuity errors. I will see if I can throw a print screen up when I get home tonight.

u can try that one if it works and the one called ATSC_BDA_SOURCE.
They should both work.
The older version TsReader I have only has a generic hauppauge QAM source which is what I have been using to look at clear QAM on TWC.
(no specific hauppauge for ATSC).

I like the the ATSC_BDA_SOURCE because it comes with Visual C++ source code as an example so programmers can modify it. I have only played around a little bit to get my tuner card to report SNR correctly in dB. Takes quite a while (for a novice like me) to get the Visual C++ environment setup correctly to compile this.

In summary, the ones I use are
ATSC_BDA_SOURCE - For OTA - with inDtube ATSC Tuner (very similar to ur 950Q, ur 950Q has a 1 generation newer tuner chip than mine, but same mfr, Xceive)
HCW_Generic_QAM_Source - For Cable clear QAM - use occassionally with an ATI 650 USB tuner
DVBS_BDA_SOURCE - For DVB Satellite with the Prof 7500 DVB-S2 Tuner.

I just changed to the ATSC BDA Source Tuner and it won't work. What's worse, is the program will not let me change back. Any time I open the program, it defaults to the ATSC Tuner and if I close the window, it closes the program. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling and no avail.

EDIT: I was able to switch by holding CTRL before I opened the program. Anyway, the ATSC_BDA_SOURCE won't work with my tuner. Only, the Hauppage ATSC option works, and I can't see any SNR data, or maybe I don't know where to look.