Global Ottawa DTV Transition - Aug. 16, 2011 - update in Post #331

[flavoie]

on another vein, I do have 20-some feet between my VHF in the attic and my 7777 on the roof !

[backpackster]

@backpackster can you provide your TVFool and antenna info? I'm trying to decide if Global is going to be a possibility for me in Kemptville. My LG TV spends a long time on channel 6 when scanning but I get no signal at the moment.

My LG TV also hovers around 6. Autoscan then skips it. I need to go in and manually add global even though it is my strongest local signal. Then all is perrrrfect.

[statik]

Originally Posted by roger1818

statik. Not a dud, but just a poor quality amp (You get what you pay for). A NF of 5dB isn't very good (ya I know mine is similar, but I bought as a test from a store that has a good return policy). That brand is also banned from this forum for shady business practices. I would return it if you can.

The CM-7777 is much better and also has an FM trap (which you should use). I would also recommend getting a good VHF-LO antenna (an amp cannot make up for a poor antenna).

People are getting all sorts of crazy setups to work, but the weather is good right now. Once the weather gets bad, their reception may change and that is not a fun time to be on the roof to fix things.

So the CM-7777 made a big difference in all my channels; picking up many more than I did before (I scan 20 channels now). But still no Global-TV.

I tried using a home made folded dipole tuned for channel-6 as well. I get a reasonable amount of power (8 bars out of 10 on my samsung TV) but it still just shows up black.

I tried moving the rabbit ears out the window; but same problem; lots of power; but no decoding. I guess I'll have to move to a directional antenna.

[charettepa]

try a rescan
i had the same issue
stayed black until a rescan as the chanel pids changed
if the signal is that strong it should work

[statik]

Originally Posted by charettepa

try a rescan
i had the same issue
stayed black until a rescan as the chanel pids changed
if the signal is that strong it should work

Re-scanned but still no luck... I may move my setup into the attic this weekend; starting to look at options for directional antennas.

My current antenna room faces east which is good for HC; but CF is due north. If I go the attic I can point the antenna better.

Scott

[charettepa]

not a very good chance of global working indoors
good luck with attic
i had to go to roof for it to work
and im only 16 miles away
i still get a little bit of pixelation

[statik]

So in looking for a VHF-LO antenna;

Looking at:
VIP-302SR
AntennaCraft Y5-2-6

Both are huge (9' wide); any recommendations for other directional antennas which are more compact?

[wilspin]

What kind of Gain are U looking for?

[flavoie]

A channel cut yogi for ch6 like the 5y6s would be smaller, if you can find one

[roger1818]

The 9' elements on both the VIP-302SR and Y5-2-6 are for channel 2. As flavoie suggested, a cut-channel Yagi for channel 6 would be smaller (about 6' wide). The laws of physics prevent an antenna for channel 6 from being smaller than that without sacrificing gain.

[mr weather]

Could something like an FM broadcast yagi work for channel 6?

[stampeder]

Yes, but if it is a commercial FM radio antenna model you would need to do some careful research because many of those designs intentionally had very steep dropoffs below 88MHz where channel 6 lives.

[stampeder]

Originally Posted by roger1818

The laws of physics prevent an antenna for channel 6 from being smaller than that without sacrificing gain.

Unfortunately the quarter-wave option really does not work well in the VHF-LO band either, so there is no high performance mini-antenna solution.

[roger1818]

While it might work, I wouldn't reccomend using an FM antenna for channel 6. One of the issues receiving channel 6 is FM interference and an FM antenna will maximize that especially since most of the FM stations (especially the high power ones) in Ottawa also originate from Camp Fortune.

I can't help but wonder if moving Global to HC would help with reception a bit, but changing channels would be a better solution overall.

[derek_in_ottawa]

Hello,

I am near Island Park/Westboro Transit Station in the middle of Ottawa with an HTPC setup using Windows 7 Media Center and a Hauppage 950Q.
I have a DBGH (8bay) in the attic.

I get Global TV on my set in perfect HD just fine at 92% signal strength, I get it just fine in Hauppage WinTV 7 software on the HTPC, but I do not get it through Windows MCE.

I even added it manually and rescanned many times, and MCE behaves like Global TV is an invalid signal though the signal strength meter is good.

I read in other threads that Global's DT settings affected other people as well, like the PSIP settings would not be recognized by Windows Media Center.

I get all the other Digital's (that are in signal range) fine,
(CBC 100%, CITY 75%, SUN 100%, OMNI1 50%, OMNI2 20%, TVO 100%)

I wonder if MCE recognizes ATSC at VHF-LO frequencies. (i.e. 6)

I think it is something different about Global's channel settings that Media Center is not recognizing. I wonder if it is some conflict with the old analog 6, something left in the registries of Windows.

Any advice?


I think I will try next to reset everything in MCE and restart again with the ATSC hacks from Peter Near and such...

How to clear MCE:
http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/09/clear...ia-center.html

Yes – close media center and then run the MediaCenterRecoveryTask from the task scheduler (i.e. right click on it and choose Run). Dont do the run from elevated. Im pretty sure it needs the System account to run.

After its run, check that all the %programdata%\microsoft\ehome\mcepg*.db files are deleted.