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#1
02-16-2008, 01:42 PM
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My experiences with ATSC HDTV
Earlier today I came into posession of a HDTV tuner card for my computer. This card can receive both Analog and Digital signals. I have been playing with it for awhile and I want to share my experience.
HOOKING UP AN ANTENNA: After I got the card installed into my computer, I hooked the simpliest and crudest antenna to the card, a 3 foot long piece of wire. The piece of wire is my desperate antenna, normally used to bring in a TV signal when nothing else is available. Normally I can bring in a few watchable analog stations. The simple wire antenna failed to bring in any digital signals. My next step was to lengthen the wire. This did the trick. I now can bring in several digital channels. WATCHING AND CHANNEL CHANGING: The picture quality on High definition channels is great! I can make out more details on people's faces, read smaller text, and the framerate is smoother then analog NTSC. Standard definition digital looks kinda crappy though. There are compression artifacts, and the detail isn't nowhere near as fine, but the framerate is still smooth. Channel changing is fast. I have heard complaints here about digital tuners taking a second or two to change channels. The tuner in my TV card changes at a comparable speed to an analog tuner. WEAK SIGNALS: My software includes a signal strength meter, which I like VERY much! I used to guess at analog signal strength by how fuzzy the picture was. This strength meter tells me exactly how strong the signal is. When signal strength drops to below 50% CORRECTION: 70%, the picture starts to go out. However, it does not take a second or two to come back. It comes right back right away once the signal is strong enough. There's no blockiness or artifacts. The picture and sound just stop, then come right back once the signal strength improves. A good antenna is necessery. OVERALL JUDGEMENT: Over the air digital TV is not too bad. I can bring in local stations with a signal strength of 85 to 90% with a piece of long wire, in a basement no less. There is no ghosting or fuzziness, and no interference. Picture quality is certainly better for HD, but somewhat worse for SD. All in all, I don't think there will be a revolt after the 2009 switchover. I will probably be putting a roof antenna up to see if I can bring in more channels in the future. 
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#2
02-16-2008, 04:16 PM
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I found that an old fashioned UHF hoop antenna works well for HDTV. All the HD in this town (NYC) are in teh UHF band. This is on an RCA ATSC/SAT receiver set top box, and also on a Samsung ATSC ATSC box. But I'm line of sight 14 miles from the Empire State Building, where the signals come from.
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#4
02-16-2008, 05:27 PM
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MRX... Since we are in the same broadcast area, can you tell me what channels you bring in?
Are any Canadian stations broadcasting in digital yet? (9 & 32) I actually care more about those since the only OTA-programing I really care about is Coronation Street on 9, and Saturday Night Movies on 32.
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From Captain Video, 1/4/2007 "It seems that Italian people are very prone to preserve antique stuff."
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#5
02-16-2008, 05:34 PM
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Carmine:
So far I have picked up PBS HD, CBS HD, Channel 20 SD, WADL channel 38 SD and WKBD 50 SD. Still working out antenna placement. I currently do not have an outdoor antenna. (would REALLY like one, but...)
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#6
02-16-2008, 06:05 PM
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A bit of an update: A weird issue has popped up.
Earlier today I was watching a couple stations with maybe 65% signal strength, and they didn't hiccup one bit. Now stations with 75 to 80% signal strength are hiccuping alot. Perhaps there IS some form of interference. These stations seem to be in the lower UHF band (Around 300 Mhz). maybe something in my house is generating an RF field that's screwing with reception...
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#7
02-16-2008, 06:20 PM
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Quote:
So you are getting PBS ("normally" 56)... What channel is it digitally? Do digital channels use a number? I hope it's not 0110111001000, because that's damn hard to remember. Same question for CBS (62). So low-budget channels 20, 38 and 50 are only broadcasting in standard-def? What digital "number" do they appear on? Why no reception of FOX, NBC and ABC (2,4,7)? Sorry for the question ambush, but you are the FIRST person I know locally who has bothered with digital nonsense. 
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From Captain Video, 1/4/2007 "It seems that Italian people are very prone to preserve antique stuff."
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#8
02-16-2008, 06:24 PM
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Over-the-air HDTV is the way to go. There are all sorts of different channels out there and the "regular" stations often have two or three secondary channels for music videos and other programming. My local PBS station has one sub-channel for documentaries and another for panel discussions, etc. in addition the the regular channel.
We watched FOX HDTV SuperBowl on the projector at 1080i - you could see everyone's pimples. I have been using an off-air receiver for about three years now. I see absolutely no need for cable or other pay service (although Discovery, History and the Tour de France would be nice - but just not worth the $$$) DH
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#9
02-16-2008, 06:30 PM
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Quote:
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Mom (1938 - 2013) - RIP, I miss you Spunky, (1999 - 2016) - RIP, pretty girl! Rascal, (2007 - 2021) RIP, miss you very much
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#10
02-16-2008, 06:53 PM
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Quote:
First off: Why no reception of NBC, ABC or FOX? Well, the computer that my TV card is in, is in a basement that is notorious for PISS POOR TV reception. All I currently have available to me are indoor antennas. I think I need a good outdoor antenna and a good 75 feet of coax cable. As for channel numbers... I'm still trying to figure those out. For example, my TV card labels digital channels as "12XX" AKA: 1201, 1215, etc. HOWEVER I do know one of the digital PBS stations (there's more then one, same with WADL) calls itself channel 56.1 Also, the standard def Channel 20 station calls itself by its analog name (can't think of what it is) I will conduct more tests and try to rig up a better antenna. I will also try hooking it to the cable system and see if I pull in any digital channels.
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#11
02-16-2008, 07:46 PM
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Quote:
It's called "mytv", or WMYD. I can't think of the last time I watched it.  Oh wait, it was 1989 when it was called WXON and they showed cool movies at night and Addams Family/Beaver/Twilight Zone in the afternoon. 
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From Captain Video, 1/4/2007 "It seems that Italian people are very prone to preserve antique stuff."
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#12
02-16-2008, 08:20 PM
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WYMD Yeah.
I"m frustrated because my TV card scans for new channels, and won't save channels it's already found! I've lost all the HD channels I had earlier today! This isn't Digital TV's fault, but not knowing the channel numbers is contributing to my headaches right now. Oh, and one improvement I see in Digital TV's future is something similar to the skip protection found on CD players, where the TV will buffer a few seconds of video to compensate for a poor signal... EDIT: Okay, I know that Cw50 is channel 14 on my tuner channel, but it's also called 50.1 WMYD TV 20 seems to be channel 21, but is also called 20.1. There's a 20.2 channel that seems to be on the same channel...??? My TV card software is being very cryptic about information such as channel numbers, so I can't give any better info. EDIT 2: I strongly suspect that the digital TV transmitters are located in different areas of Detriot then their analog counterparts. This is suspected because on an antenna I rigged up, certain analog channels come in almost perfectly, but their digital counterparts won't come in at all. Rotating the antenna allows the digital channels to return, with so so analog...
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#13
02-16-2008, 09:22 PM
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Your computer based receiver card and software may do some stupid things with channel numbers. A regular digital TV should be designed to show the channel number of the analog signal plus a secondary number after a decimal point or dash. Thus, analog channel 20 (which is really on RF channel 20!) should show as simply "20" while all the digital signals put out by that station (whcih are on a different RF channel) will show as 20.1, 20.2, 20.3, etc. One warning - this does depend on the station sending out the correct designation, but they should all straightened out on this by now! The broadcasters (at least the ones who were paying attention) insisted on this arrangement because their local programming is usually branded by their analog channel number, e.g. "TV7 news at 11:00."
An exception to this may occur during intial setup - the set may use the actual RF channel number until it has acquired the "virtual channel number" form the DTV broadcast. Regarding indoor antennas, the loop is not so great. There is a small log periodic called the "Silver Sensor" and some other variations on it that is pretty good, and surprisingly, the old "dual bow tie and reflector" set top is not too terrible either for UHF. Indoor low VHF can still be a problem for digital as it has been for analog, but in your case, if all the digital stations are UHF, no need to worry. An amplified indoor antenna may or may not help - unfortunately their designs seem to vary all over the place.
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#14
02-16-2008, 09:28 PM
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Oh ho my TV card software is doing some stupid stuff all right...
I pulled in 3 HDTV stations with a small outdoor antenna I rigged up. Signal strength is at 100% I rotate the antenna to try to capture more channels, and the channels i do have still come in at 90-95%. I rescan, and the software finds NOTHING!!! It should have at the very least found those three channels again!
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#15
02-17-2008, 10:24 AM
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UPDATE: I think HDTV stations switch of their transmitters at night time. Today I scanned for channels, using the exact same antenna setup I had last night, and I've found:
WDIV-HD WDIV-SD WWJ-HD WTVS-HD WTVS-SD WTVSSD2 WXYZ-HD WXYZ-SD WADL-DT WMYD-HD WCSN-TV and WKBD-HD Lotsa channels today. Interesting about WWJ, as that's a radio station...
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