"Conspiracy" Theory: CTV Olympics OTA

[cfraser]

OK, I am just throwing this out there. At x:47 on the clock, the signal drops out. I have a separate monitor here that I've set to running signal strength for this experiment. Normally it sits at 97/100 for CTV OTA in this location. At 47 minutes, +/-1 minute, past the hour the signal drops out. Any *rational* explanations for this? Happened yesterday and today for as long as I was watching, which was mostly during the Canada hockey games and a few hours past. It didn't make sense to me that signal could drop from full to nothing, so, being anal and analytical, I decided to monitor.

[ota_canuck]

Hmmm! Sounds kinda creepy.

Have you ever seen that new show called FlashForward ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashForward

A mysterious event causes nearly everyone on the planet to simultaneously lose consciousness for 137 seconds, during which people see what appear to be visions of their lives approximately six months in the future

OK, so if you did not see into the future, then it's most likely a power surge caused by something in your immediate area being turned on/off at that time every hour. Sort of like a auto-defrost cycle on a refrigerator.

[cfraser]

Hah! I thought of that, but nothing here is on any sort of a timer. Unless...I may have a precision Russian fridge. Or is it German? Don't they know when to give up?

My seeing into the future is limited, but my seeing into the past is pretty good. At least to last night when I started noting times, even though this has been going on for several days.

Stay tuned to the OTA-Files, the (signal) strength is out there.

[ota_canuck]

Actually, I was being quite serious about the auto-defrost. If there is something amiss with the defrost coil, the fridge will attempt to start the defrost cycle each hour at the same time. It will try to start until the coil gets too hot and then it will recyle again until the next hour. To test this out just unplug your fridge for 10 minutes and see if the time of the interference intervals change to the time you restarted the fridge.

BTW, if the fridge does have that problem. shut the fridge off until it is fixed because it could cause a fire.

[cfraser]

OK, I will test that next hour. This x:47 just coming up I will look for the "blackout" to make sure it's still "consistent". Does my fridge have that accurate a timer in it, to know that an hour has passed? It's not really Russian... The fridge is less than 5 years old, forget exactly.

Edit: they played commercials. Tied into the "conspiracy" theory and a rational explanation is the signal never drops during commercials. "Rational" would be some kind of feed switching etc. that takes place at the remote (??) source at x:47, causing a complete temporary signal outage. Presuming the commercials are sourced elsewhere. Nothing local happened at x:47 or shortly after (so I doubt it's the fridge), I can still hear the feed now 5 minutes later while I'm typing.

[ota_canuck]

The defrost timer start and resets every time there is a power outage. It normally would defrost every 12 hours for a few minutes, but if it fails it will attempt to defrost each hour at the same time.

[cfraser]

Complete outage at 12:47 local. Fridge unplugged. No commercials playing. I'm not making this up... Something is happening at that time hourly. Don't see any UFOs out there, but then, they'd tell me if they were.

[Tom.F.1]

just past the :47 mark with no problems here.

but at 07:30 every day, City goes all glitchy, pixelly for 10 seconds, without a drop in signal strength.

[cfraser]

OK, last observation for the night coming up.

The blackout is always very short, that's not a problem, the "interesting" thing is going from an otherwise-steady 97 to 0 with the "synchronised" timing only.

Edit: Nothing this time. Since my viewing TV and signal-strength-monitoring TV share antenna feed from an amplified splitter, one could reasonably guess (as others inferred) that it's a local power thing. How "local"? I do live *VERY* close to a large (Ontario's largest??...used to be) tranformer station. They might do something fairly regularly that causes my splitter to drop out. I can't easily test for that as I only have the one antenna, but sounds reasonable/possible on the demonstrable/rational side.

[majortom]

The broken fridge sounds like a plausible theory.
Along with a dozen others.
Could it be your neighbors fridge? are other tv's in the same household or apartment bldg doing the same thing?

Have learned mainly through this site, that it takes more than just good "signal strength" to properly decode a signal.
Also has to be a "clean" Signal. The every hour thing sounds like some sort of external interference to me. Are you using an outdoor antenna? Are you using an outdoor Pre-Amp?

Your ATSC receiver requires minimum 15.2 dB C/N to decode a signal, which also could be written as 15 dB C/(N+I), I suppose, where:

C-> Desired Signal
N-> Noise
I-> Interference

Would help to know what the normal C/N is at your receiver, when it's working right. And what it degrades to when it drops out (likely to 0, meaning no lock). Though I know hardly any receivers can display this information.

[CastleRockDays]

hmm... that's weird. Is it only happening to CTV? Has this previously happened in the past, or just recently within the last couple of days?

[cfraser]

To be honest, I rarely (never) watched CTV before the Olympics. Mostly I just use the OTA TV for HNIC on CBC.

The fridge isn't broken or anything, there's not a smidgen of frost in the (bottom) freezer, it was unplugged earlier anyway. It's not the furnace, checked for that. And even in semi-semi-tropical Pickering, we hardly ever use the A/C in the winter. That's all I have that goes on/off by itself. Of course it could be something else somebody else off the same local distribution transformer right across the street has. I think I'll replace the PS electrolytic caps in the dist amp JIC, I've had this amp/splitter for a couple decades...

[Jase88]

I haven't noticed any issues with CTV. And I watched the entire game last night.

I doubt it has anything to do with the nuclear facility. We're all connected to the same grid in Ontario (remember the big blackout a few years back?), and if something with the grid was acting up, it would impact far more than just your individual reception.

[PPL4GOLF]

I have same problems with CityHD and actually it could be any channels though not in any regularity.

For the longest time, I blamed conspiracy by Roger. Then I set up OTA at my folks. They live further out but they can see the CN Tower on the roof. Everything is solid at their place. So, I know it's not Roger but I do blame them for weak signal and garbage PSIP data.

[cfraser]

Originally Posted by Jase88

I doubt it has anything to do with the nuclear facility.

I didn't mean the nuclear facility, rather Cherrywood TS. I regularly hear the breakers going there. This morning there was a loud one (or maybe more) that actually shook my windows and woke me up. I'm not really super close but sound really echoes with the hills here, thunder can be very invigorating.

Anyway, it must be something VERY local, and it doesn't seem to go on really late/early into the morning. I'll check again either tonight or tomorrow during the hockey games. I think we've eliminated that it's an actual signal problem then, so "something electrical" that happens regularly during certain hours and is only affecting my OTA amp. It seems to just be my problem, so no "conspiracy theory". Too bad...they're more fun.