I am having more problems pulling in VHF digital than anything. I am about 30 miles from Austin, having some trouble with Channel 7 and KSAT I use to could get very good when it was on UHF, now that they moved to VHF its almost impossible to pull in. When Fox 7 was on channel 56 I had NO problems pulling it in. Its a shame they kept VHF on.
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I wished VHF would of gone away with the digital flip.
- Thread starter jras20
- Start date
My experience with VHF on digital has been mostly positive. I had to get my rabbit ears up high enough to get the station 22 miles from my house that operates with less than 10 kw of power, but it comes in better now on DT-8 than it did on DT-36. What it seems to go back to is something you may have heard me say about radio that also applies to TV. It's not something people will work at to enjoy. Most people don't understand the limitations of their antennas and aren't willing to do the research and work necessary to put their antenna in a good spot. I'm also not sure that going to all UHF would have turned out the way so many people think. I have a friend in Kansas City, where all TV is UHF (unless you're trying to get a couple of stations from Topeka), and he can't get 3 stations there despite being fairly close to their towers and being able to get other stations on the exact same towers!
KSAT, by the way, is a station I've heard a lot of people say they can't get, even from a few who can get KCWX!
KSAT, by the way, is a station I've heard a lot of people say they can't get, even from a few who can get KCWX!
Me too. Those portable ATSC TVs don't get VHF indoors but get UHF perfectly. I hate the fact that the RF VHFs give off static on analog cable. KRIV is no longer blurry after the transition (since KUHT shifted back to 8 from 9) but KTRK is now the worst, followed by KUHT and KHOU on Comcast thanks to their VHF RF channels. Pre-transition, the high-VHF channels suffered from ghosting due to the OTA analog broadcasts along with KRIV (KHOU-DT/31and KTRK-DT/32 was on UHF pre-transition), now it's digital fuzz on analog cable.
My father's HDTV gets VHF perfectly only because of an amplified rabbit-ear antenna. The fact that he's in Alief (≈ 5-10 miles radius from Houston antenna farm) helps! If he was in North Harris County or in Katy, I doubt that rabbit-ear VHF would be reliable. (Another advantage of UHF only: UHF antennas are easier to hide.)
Kent said:
My father's HDTV gets VHF perfectly only because of an amplified rabbit-ear antenna. The fact that he's in Alief (≈ 5-10 miles radius from Houston antenna farm) helps! If he was in North Harris County or in Katy, I doubt that rabbit-ear VHF would be reliable. (Another advantage of UHF only: UHF antennas are easier to hide.)
I would say that any time you have a problem getting a signal like this, call the station and let them know. They will either have a solution for you or put it with all the other complaints and use it in a filing with the FCC to try to improve their transmission. That's exactly what happened with KTVT here in the DFW area.
Kent said:
I think VHF-Hi has some advantages over UHF in theory, but it hasn't worked out in practice because of two things: first, the FCC let antenna manufacturers market UHF-only antennas as "HDTV" antennas (not the OP's problem, but it's one of my pet peeves because it's a problem for a lot of other folks); and second, their limits on VHF power vs. transmitting antenna height are too strict IMO. If KSAT (or KTVT, for that matter) could broadcast at 65-70 kW I'd bet the extra 5 dB would solve a lot of the problems folks with good rabbit ears have had. I'm aware of interference concerns but I can't imagine interference problems would be worse than what we have now. After all, most folks at risk of interference live at the fringe, so they'll have a good directional antenna pointed at one station or the other.
VHF-Lo is hopeless; it should be reserved for LP and/or "lifeline" analog broadcasts (and channel 6 reassigned to LPFM) where it could actually be useful to people.
The irony is that folks who live far enough out to need an outdoor antenna now often have better VHF reception than those who live close to the towers!
That's kind of screwed if people can get a VHF 5 station when KSAT is on 7.
eskipper411 said:
First, one minor correction, KSAT is on DT-12.
I suspect KCWX reception has to do with JHBrandt was saying. People who were getting KCWX off-air were effectively already DX'ers since its transmitter was so far out of town. So, they can still get it with relative ease.
The same situation is apparently quite common in Tennessee, which has 3 stations on DT-5. People along the Cumberland Plateau and into Kentucky can get WTVF-5 just fine and can't get much of anything else from Nashville, especially now that WBIR Knoxville is on 10 along with WSMV. I've heard similar stories from people around Memphis being able to get WMC-5 and around the Tri-Cities being able to get WCYB-5, but the people in the city can't get either. In fact, WTVF and WCYB have applied for UHF translators in the cities. That's not too different from the two translators on DT-8 for Austin and San Antonio that KCWX is requesting.
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