CBS-HD OTA Giving me Fits

[skyviewmark1]

Ok.. I am a technian.. I am a dealer. And there isn't much about this stuff I don't know.. And I am stumped.

My 622 works beautiful. My HD-OTA on every other channel works fine.
But The CBS-HD OTA here is hopeless. I have a 98-100 signal level. Watching live is challenging. Watching recorded is impossible. The picture pixilates. The signal drops to 0 occasionally and gives the dreaded signal lost screen. My first guess is that CBS has a sorry delivery system here. But a signal that drops from 100 to 0 on a dime and returns. Not a weather issue. Does this at all times. I have a rather large antenna in my attic with an amplifier. About 35 miles from the local tower of CBS. Since other HD-OTA gives me hardly any problems even some that are only getting an 80-85 Signal level it leads me to believe that the local CBS is failing me.. However I haven't seen this problem on other customers systems I am not sure. Wish that I could get CBS-HD on the satellite, but that is not an option here.. I am in Southern Alabama in the Mobile-Pensacola DMA and wonder if anyone has any suggestion on my peculiar ailment.

[Bill R]

Mark,

Don't be so quick to blame your local station. When you receive a strong signal from a digital channel and the signal drops quickly and the picture breaks up, almost 100 percent of the time the problem is multipath. Cutting down the gain of your amp may fix it or just re-aimming the antenna could solve the problem.

[skyviewmark1]

Mark,

Don't be so quick to blame your local station. When you receive a strong signal from a digital channel and the signal drops quickly and the picture breaks up, almost 100 percent of the time the problem is multipath. Cutting down the gain of your amp may fix it or just re-aimming the antenna could solve the problem.

I have been doing satellite TV for so long that sometimes I get blurred vision on some things. OTA is not something that I have dealt with a lot since before digital signals no one even tried to get them here in the back country. But now with Digital OTA I am trying to catch up on what I know about this end of TV.

I would never have thought of turning my amp down to make it work better.. But it makes some kind of sense.. The CBS HD-OTA channel that gives me the problems is the channel that is pegged on the signal strength. The others have lower levels and don't break up..

Sometimes you just don't see the forrest for the trees.. Thanks for sending me a direction to start looking.

[oljim]

What amp and ant do you have

[motts]

I have been doing satellite TV for so long that sometimes I get blurred vision on some things. OTA is not something that I have dealt with a lot since before digital signals no one even tried to get them here in the back country. But now with Digital OTA I am trying to catch up on what I know about this end of TV.

I would never have thought of turning my amp down to make it work better.. But it makes some kind of sense.. The CBS HD-OTA channel that gives me the problems is the channel that is pegged on the signal strength. The others have lower levels and don't break up..

Sometimes you just don't see the forrest for the trees.. Thanks for sending me a direction to start looking.


I have the same problem with NBC in the NYC area. I am only 11 miles from the station. It has the weakest signal amongst the networks at 74. All the others are 98 or 99. But, NBC is the one that drops suddenly to 0, and then reappears. Anyone know what could be causing this situation? It seems peculiar. I have no amp, just an antenna.

[Bill R]

Motts,

Even if you don't have an amp the problem could be multipath or it could be that your antenna is not aimed properly for that station. Go to http://www.antennaweb.org and put in your address and see what direction the station tower is and pay close attention to its direction in relation to where your other stations are and where you antenna is currently pointed.

[motts]

Motts,

Even if you don't have an amp the problem could be multipath or it could be that your antenna is not aimed properly for that station. Go to http://www.antennaweb.org and put in your address and see what direction the station tower is and pay close attention to its direction in relation to where your other stations are and where you antenna is currently pointed.

This is what I consulted to initially set up my antenna. The thing is I get a channel that is almost 20 degrees off my pointing direction and is farther from NBC. There are other less extreme examples as well. NBC is only 3 degrees off from where I have my antenna pointing right now.

[skyviewmark1]

Problem seems to be solved.. Jury is till out while I give it time to make sure. But I lowered the gain on my amp all the way and CBS seems to be working fairly well. A few pixelations every now and then but so far no complete drop-outs.. Thanks for the hint on the amp.. I never really considered that it could have been the problem.

As far as the antenna adjustment, I am really stuck with an antenna pointing problem because I live north of all towers and half are south west of me and the other half are south east. So I really have to split the middle to get OTA from the big 4 networks.

[Bill R]

As far as the antenna adjustment, I am really stuck with an antenna pointing problem because I live north of all towers and half are south west of me and the other half are south east. So I really have to split the middle to get OTA from the big 4 networks.

Mark,

As long as that is working for you that is what counts. What you might want to consider if that doesn't work out is to use two antennas, one pointing south and the other pointing south west. You combine them using a backward installed splitter. Way back in the 70s we used to do that to get one station that was in a different direction than our other stations (we used an an antenna that was "cut" for just that channel).