Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums banner

OMNI1&2 Toronto: Digital OTA Now Broadcasting (June 9)

13K views 69 replies 35 participants last post by  Snake785 
#1 ·
This long awaited event is now just 48 hours away. (Noon EDT Saturday)

Stampeder, I hope you don't mind it if have a thread for this launch like we had for the 3 Canwest launches back in April.
 
#65 ·
I tested this out today. Signal quality wasn't very stable, it fluctuated between 55% and 90%. Sometimes it dropped to 0 and the stream cut off for half a second or more. I was about 1km directly south of FCP and had my antenna (PHDTV1) pointed northwest to compensate for LOS issues. Transmitter fault?
 
#66 ·
choppy video on OMNI 1?

Does anyone experience choppy video on OMNI 1? I get a stable signal (according to my signal meter, I get a SNR of ~22 with no errors in the stream). I don't get choppy video on any other channel I receive (CBC-DT, CTV-DT, CIII-DT, SunTV, CityTV-DT, OMNI2, WIVB-DT, PBS, WKBW-DT, WLNO-DT, and WUTV-DT).

I'm running SageTV with a Hauppage HVR-1600 ATSC tuner card. I've tried different video codecs, but OMNI 1 still suffers from this issue, whereas the others are as smooth as a regular STB.

Edit: By the way, the antenna I'm using is a home made bow-tie style antenna with a RCA 10db signal booster. Without the booster, I don't ave a strong enough signal to get CIII-DT, SunTV, OMNI 1 and CityTV-DT.
 
#67 ·
I just did a little check for you; my signal levels are below. (I've switched to 64bit, so they can't be read as easily in watchhdtv anymore - the number below is "%" :p)
It was so much easier to check in 32bit, the value was only like 5 digits.
OMNI1 is "choppy" for me, but its not consistently choppy (perhaps you should describe your situation more: is it choppy all the time? or like every 15-30s or something, etc.)
3847998 omni 1
4565269 omni 2
1370880 mytv (no picture)
3978195 ABC
5282665 cw
I have yet to determine the "drop off point" with the new readouts, but I would estimate around 3000000.
This would be consistent with OMNI 1 having a few skips here and there (low signal)
ABC is just slightly stronger, and it is flowing fine.
OMNI2 was fine, but it also showed stronger signal.
CW is there to show a max point of my signal, because they are always like 100%. (CBC, CITY have similar strengths as well)

I am using an HVR-950 - the USB version of your tuner.
 
#68 ·
Hey recneps77, thanks for doing a check for me. Let me try and better describe what I see when I tune to OMNI1.

The video will be smooth for about 2 seconds, then it'll hesitate for about 1 second, and then I'll get video for about 1 second but it'll show all of the missed frames I should've seen while the video was frozen (making the video appear to run fast). It'll just keep doing that the entire time I'm tuned to the channel

As for audio, I seem to get a perfect Dolby Digital Stereo stream, no gaps from what I can tell (my receiver doesnt show a cut in the audio stream at all).

I havent tried using watchhdtv (never heard about it until now), but I'll see if I get a better results with that than I do with SageTV.
 
#69 ·
I have never seen that happen when watching tv - it's probably SageTV doing it.
Trying watchhdtv would be a good test to rule out whether is the program or the signal.
All I see in watchhdtv is a flicker (like dropped frame) or stuttering with low signal.
(or black screen if not enough signal at all)
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top