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WNBC OTA Signal Suffering?
- Thread starter hubcity
- Start date
How can you tell the same signal strength? Do you have a signal meter on your digital box?hubcity said:
In the OTA analogue world, we used to see that visually with the amount - or lack of - snow/static interfering with the picture. Channel 4would be duplicated in Washington, DC on the backside.
In the OTA digital world, the picture is crystal clear, or it's gone. Anything in-between would appear as picture break-up.
WNBC is no longer on #4, it broadcasts on RF28. However, there are several of issues here. MD has a full power signal on 28. 2 Philly stations are close enough to interfere with your picture in Freehold. The biggest offender I see is WFME. Their new digital channel is 29.
Welcome to the future.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
badjef said:
Digital tuner with a "signal strength" meter. I was referring to WNBC RF28, as that's the only WNBC this particular TV's ever received. (They do identify as WNBC now; they dropped the DT when they shut down the analog signal.)
Could be WFME, though, if that's a relatively new digital channel. WNBC used to come in fine, now it doesn't.
The month of June is notorious for the "waveguide effect", otherwise known as "tunneling", or "tropo", where the atmosphere redirects the spaceward signal, bends and redirects it as a groundwave signal hundreds of miles away. It tends to confuse the receiver with the local station.hubcity said:
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
B
Bob1370
Guest
I wonder if these stations would be better off going back to their old channels (in WNBC's case Channel 4) and cranking signal power back up to their old visual ERP (in WNBC's case 30 kW from 1465 ft. HAAT). If there's any noise inherent in the lower VHF band that would be more than enough power to compensate and give a solid signal over an area comparable to the old analog signal.
There's a lot of talk about the FCC making more room for broadband on UHF by pushing heritage VHF stations back to their old channels with ERP equal to their old visual transmitters at comparable antenna heights (45 kW on 2, 30 kW from the top of ESB on 4, 37 kW on 5, 125 kW on 7, 9, 11 and 13, etc.), and pushing other stations either down to VHF or onto lower UHF channels, with stations in each market on every other channel on both bands instead of 6 channels apart for UHF. They'd probably be able to fit all the full service stations on the bottom 36 to 40 channels that way across the country, and have everything above 600 mHz free for other assignments.
There's a lot of talk about the FCC making more room for broadband on UHF by pushing heritage VHF stations back to their old channels with ERP equal to their old visual transmitters at comparable antenna heights (45 kW on 2, 30 kW from the top of ESB on 4, 37 kW on 5, 125 kW on 7, 9, 11 and 13, etc.), and pushing other stations either down to VHF or onto lower UHF channels, with stations in each market on every other channel on both bands instead of 6 channels apart for UHF. They'd probably be able to fit all the full service stations on the bottom 36 to 40 channels that way across the country, and have everything above 600 mHz free for other assignments.
tripinva said:
People who have gone OTA and live in NY Metro have a *lot* of experience with it, what with WABC back to VHF7, WPIX on VHF11, and WNET on VHF13. And lemme tell ya, it's a real pain in the butt out here in central NJ. No wonder mobile wants that UHF spectrum - it's good spectrum! Looking back on history, it's a shame UHF was regarded as the red-headed stepchild simply due to shoddy receiver implementations.
In the analogue world of long, long, ago, there was "low VHF" which consisted of 2-6, "high VHF", 7-13, and "those other channels" on UHF, 14-83.hubcity said:
The New Yorkers decided to return to their analogue allocations because most people had "VHF ONlY" antennas - meaning they couldn't, or didn't care to, receive anything using those shorter pieces in the front of the receive antenna, since you had "Big 3", 3 independents with televised Baseball, and the PBS station, all making up the "New York 7".
Staying on their UHF would mean they would have to force people to buy a new antenna. So, those on the high VHF (7-13) elected to go back to their old allocation. 2 and 4 decided to stay on their "transition" channel. It was probably the better option sisnce WPVI ran into a bee hive with their results of returning to Channel 6 in the low VHF.
Most roof top antennas are not coming with the longer elements anymore.
Low VHF for TV is dead if there is no anntenna with which to receive it.
OTA will be dead as a result of the failed business model used for the transition.
Water is still coming into the Titanic and the TV stations are still trying to rearrange the deck chairs.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
WHYY 12 PBS and WPVI 6 ABC are horrible out here near Burlington in South Jersey as well. They left both of those channels on the VHF spectrum, and it takes a lot of moving the antenna to get a clear picture. So, I tried using the TERK FM Pro I have since FM is between VHF channel 6 and 7. The problem seemed to go away, but forget about it with any ordinary antenna. KYW is on UHF 26 around here I believe, so that is the only channel I know that could interfere with WNBC this way.
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