Cogitech,

After seeing your satellite photo location, you have to get around that BIG tree! I have been through that once thinking about stacking/ganging, pre-amp stuff...Until I relocate my little CM4221 to have LOS of those digital channels. What a difference!

Beside non-penetrating method for your antenna, you can also consider "wall mount" on that new location.

By the way, we all been through some "pain" with OTA...don't feel bad.

My house and length of leads are similar to Cogitech (who lives just down St. Clair Avenue a few miles) but I'm much closer to CN Tower AND CN Tower and Buffalo are within 3 degrees. Sound hopeless?

I found a solution using an 8dB distribution amp (replacing a 4-way splitter that costs 8 dB). It gets me PBS always and most other Buffalo stations pretty regularly. See #1766 above (that's page 118 on my system).

Yes, I know the "right" solution is a pre-amp at the antenna. But see my post.

There's a big tree that's going to be doing some interfering in a week or two. Hope not too much.

Yep, TSReader is a tool for data transport stream analysis, and it it terrific at that, but OTOH It is not in the same category of signal analyzer in the manner of these devices. You need the right tool for the right job.

yep, have to agree there,

a snippet from the source code for the TSReader Source .dll that comes with
"DCattley_TSReader_ATSCBDASource" that I use with BDA Tuner.
So, whatever the tuner chipset passes it's gonna do that little bit of interpretation
on it. Sure the guy who wrote it probably made sense for his tuner's chipset.
Two different tuners I have, one reports what seems to make sense, C/N.
While the other reports nonsense. A clever one could probably dig in to the chipset's
datasheets if available and see what it's supposed to be reporting.



wsprintfA(lpszSignalString, "%3d%% (%2d.%0.3d dbm)", quality, (strength / 1000), (strength % 1000));
if (present && locked)
{
lstrcatA(lpszSignalString, " [Locked]");
}
else if (present)
{
lstrcatA(lpszSignalString, " [Present]");

I've been researching here all morning and I have a question about LOS.

I'm about 5km from the CN tower. I have a two storey semi, over the road from me and directly in line to the tower are some three storey townhouses, are these likely to cause me a problem? My plan was to mount an antenna on a tripod on my roof.

Glyndwr, a rooftop antenna on a 5 foot mast probably has LOS (or pretty close to that) to the CN Tower, and your proximity makes it a shoo-in for great reception of those Canadian stations.

Well, I have confirmed that I don't need a pre-amp.

Today I decided to unmount my TV from the wall so I could get the coax straight into it (bypassing my PVR).

I did a scan and I get everything. I mean everything!

All my iffy channels (WIVB, WKBW, WRGZ) are solid and I also get ION, CHCH, WNYB, and CITS which are channels I have never seen before with my tuner card.

26 digital channels in total! (I had 19 or 20 at best, before).

My TV has no signal strength meter that I can find, but at least I have isolated the problem.

My thoughts of pre-amps end here.

The wife picked up an HVR-1250 today.

Bob's yer uncle (er...my uncle... whatever).

26 channels. I'm done. :)

(ION is 91 miles away and it is coming in at 88%-94%!!!)

Cogitech reception today is stronger than usual so need to give it a view weeks to see if your reception stays.Ion been booming in upto 100% but come winter it dies

You are correct, sir. I knew it was too good to be true. ION is hit and miss this morning.

Nevertheless, my reception is better than it ever has been since replacing the tuner and I now know for certain that a pre-amp is not what was in order.

Nevertheless, my reception is better than it ever has been since replacing the tuner and I now know for certain that a pre-amp is not what was in order.
Pardon the obvious, but.. have you tried that pre-amp with the new tuner yet?

No. I lent the pre-amp to my co-worker for the weekend.

Won't the pre-amp just overload the new tuner, as it did the old one?

Right now I have my signal split with a two-way splitter, one to the TV and one to the new tuner card (via a crappy, push-in type coax patch cable). The lowest signal I am getting is WIVB at 88%-91%. Nearly every other channel (Toronto, Grand Island, even some South Buffalo) are at 100% signal.

This is simply amazing performance. Much more than I ever expected.

Won't the pre-amp just overload the new tuner, as it did the old one?
No idea. It depends upon how the tuner's front-end is designed and programmed.

I have done two installations near downtown Toronto, one with a (very good) pre-amp, and one with no pre-amp. Both installations work very well.

Cheers

Cogitech,

Hold on to the pre-amp, you may need it if one day you decided to have more TVs like 4 of of them in the house or decided to have a dedicated antenna for ION channels.

Kooguy,

Yeah, the wheels were already turning in my head.

Now that I have two tuners, I'm imagining the scenarios. :cool:

Would a pre-amped 91XG aimed straight at ION guarantee solid reception from my location, or would I still be looking at winter outages?

Me and my family quite liked the programming on the two ION sub-channels, while we had it.

I doubt I'll ever have more than one "TV" in the house, as I would opt for "BeyondTV Link" over Ethernet instead. With multiple tuners in the main PVR, multiple people could stream whatever they wanted to their PC, including recorded or live shows and anything that I might have downloaded from usenet :) (There's already a computer in almost every room).

The 91XG is the highest gain consumer antenna you can get- but it is also very directional- so you would probably need a rotor. The DB-8 is almost as good, and it has a wider beam width- you could pick up more channels on the side. But then again, if you do not elevate, it really doesn't matter. How's your TVFool?

goforit,

I was thinking of a 91XG just for ION (so no rotor would be needed), but it would only make sense for me if I knew it would mean 24x7x365 reception of ION (or close to it). Silly? Maybe, but a 91XG is only worth as much as 2 months worth of cable :)

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d9c6bfb9c811dc5

So, the question remains; does anyone think a pre-amped 91XG would get solid ION year round from my location?

P.S. Here I was thinking I'd be satisfied once I got South Buffalo solid. This OTA stuff is a slippery slope :)

Your best bet to get it, would be the 91XG and an RC pre-amp or the CM7777, plus a trap/UVSJ splitter for CBLT. DIY would be the Double Bay Gray Hoverman. Are there others in your area getting ION? IMO, I don't think you can get ION beyond tropo- it's -19NM

(you should move your posts to your area)

I have no idea what tropo is, but if that means I'll only get ION once in a while, no matter what gear I use, then I'm OK with that.

I don't know how to move my posts. I was trying to keep it pre-amp related, but wanted to respond to other posters as well.

I have no idea what tropo is, but if that means I'll only get ION once in a while, no matter what gear I use, then I'm OK with that.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation

Cogitech,

ION has good programming, if you have kids, the cartoon show in 51-2 is great, 51-3 has 'HGTV' like show. 51-1 has good movies...

My XG91 is dedicated to ION (82 miles from my location) and have very consistent reception other than winter days when temperature falls below 5C. That's without a pre-amp.

XG91 has a very narrow beam (really narrow), is good for just one channel or channels from one spot. My intention is to combine my CM4221 and XG91 without using A-B switch or rotor which can complicate things when recording a show especially with multiple TVs at home.

Since only one channel is received with XG91, I can combine the feed of two dissimilar antennas (XG91 and CM4221) easily. How? I adjust the cable length of the XG91 to the joiner until signal strength of all channels from CM4221 is not affected.

If I use a CM4228 instead of XG91, adjusting cable length my not be easy tasks since I have to deal with more channels.

However, if you have two tuners then the job is easy!

Sorry for the rant, I'm not 'gurus' with antenna technology, hope some DHCers can explain better than me.