# 811 OTA Problems



## jci-joe (Jun 29, 2005)

Does anyone else have an issue with the 811 losing digital locals for no reason. I live in the Harrisburg, PA area and received DT10 (ABC27) most of the time at 92%. Once in a while, it goes to 49% with no signal. I also get digital 2 from baltimore (>70 miles away) but can get digital 59 (NBC 8) (<40 miles). 

I have played with my attic mounted omnidirectional antenna, but this is very difficut.

Any thoughts?


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## HarryO (May 3, 2005)

It sounds like the station itself is the problem. With the 1 July deadline nearing, they may be tweaking their signal/broadcast antenna. It is happening where I live. A 92% signal strength is very good.


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## cyberized (Mar 7, 2003)

Losing, losing, losing.........HA HA HA HA........mine does not even pick up any OTA with a Silver Sensor - thus NO signal to lose.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

My guess is that the sudden drop in signal might be related to Station Outages. How often does it occur? As to your NBC 8 not sure what to say expect that the 811 is more multipath sensitive than others. Also it might be related to PSIP info. I would suggest popping over to avsforums.com and looking in the Loca HDTV forums to see what you might find. Also a visit to antennaweb.org might provides some help. The 811 is definitely more sensitive than some other STBs so it might fail in areas others are more forgiven in. 

I have seen the 49% issue being either multi-path related, weak signal, or bad PSIP info.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

I always raise an eyebrow when somebody says they are using an indoor antenna, clip on, or an outdoor OTA in an attic. While yes, this does work for a lot of people, it is not an optimum way to receive OTA transmissions. Also many ATSC tuners are very sensitive to multipath interference. Having a Yagi wedged into your attic doesn't always allow for maneuverability required to fine tune the antenna. In addition if your roofing material contains metalurgical additives for flame resistance, or you just plainly have a metal roof, you could be creating a huge RF shield.

In your case, I have to ask, are you using any kind of preamp, signal amp, attenuator, etc??


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## hartal (Jan 30, 2005)

Jason,

I understand why you might raise your eyebrows about antennas in an attic, but sometimes they can work pretty well.

In my case, my house has vinyl siding and the end of my attic faces in the direction of the majority of the transmitters.

I live in Northern Virginia.

I have two Silver Sensors ganged and I get really good reception.

I'm picking up the WMPT public tv at a signal level of 70-71 and the transmitter is 42 miles away.

The reason I'm using two Silver Sensors is that I was having multipath problems picking up WETA but with the two antennas I was able to eliminate the multipath.

I am only about 15 to 20 miles from the majority of the major networks though and I get signal levels ranging from 81 to 93 on the other stations.

I tried an amplifier once, because I actually have 100 feet of coax between the Silver Sensors and the 811, but the amplifier actually degraded my reception.

So - sometimes attic antennas work. But as I said - I am lucky becasue the end wall of my attic faces the transmitters, most are just 16 miles away, and my house has vinyl siding, so not really any metal around to mess with the antenna reception pattern.

This probably doesn't really belong in the 811 support forum, but I wanted to reply to your raised eyebrows  

--allen


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

hartal said:


> Jason,
> 
> I understand why you might raise your eyebrows about antennas in an attic, but sometimes they can work pretty well.
> 
> ...


Correct Allen, but I think you stopped reading my post after the bit about eyebrows. :lol: It's OK, my wife stopped listening to me 10 years ago. :hurah: I did say that it works for a lot of people. I just stated that it was not an optimal method.


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## cyberized (Mar 7, 2003)

Yo Jason,

What would you recommend for my HD OTA problem - they hooked up my new 811 yesterday and we connected up my new Silver Sensor also - I only live about 4.4 miles from the antennas, BUT I live in an old metal Mobile Home, I am "shooting" the OTA antenna out a wincow in the direction of the TV antennas - BUT I don't care where I move it - I get NO OTA signals.
I would hazard the guess - that I HAVE to go with an outside antenna - BUT which one, cannot afford the BIG bucks outlay and even then it might not work so more money down the tubes! Radio Shack might be the way to go - because of their friendly return policy. 
Anyway - what do you all have to recommend.......and

TKS Michael


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## olgeezer (Dec 5, 2003)

Are all or any of your digital stations 2 thru 13?


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

cyberized said:


> Yo Jason,
> 
> What would you recommend for my HD OTA problem - they hooked up my new 811 yesterday and we connected up my new Silver Sensor also - I only live about 4.4 miles from the antennas, BUT I live in an old metal Mobile Home, I am "shooting" the OTA antenna out a wincow in the direction of the TV antennas - BUT I don't care where I move it - I get NO OTA signals.
> I would hazard the guess - that I HAVE to go with an outside antenna - BUT which one, cannot afford the BIG bucks outlay and even then it might not work so more money down the tubes! Radio Shack might be the way to go - because of their friendly return policy.
> ...


Without knowing your budget or surrounding geographic/terrain, it would be difficult for me to make a recommendation beyond checkout antennaweb.or or checkhd.com. But I will comment that I am very happy with my equipment. If you look in my avatar you will see my setup. My Winegard is piggybacked off my dish so there is no extra holes in my roof. Total cost with piggyback, preamp, and signal amp was like $100. Oh I got a set of perfect vision di-plexors with that too. I consistently pull broadcasts in from over 70 miles, but I do have a very clean LOS to the transmitters. As always YMMV.


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## cyberized (Mar 7, 2003)

TKS - 
My biggy local channels are 2,6,8,10,12,49. I believe from looking at the Antenna site that that would be 2.1, 6.1, etc. Tried to specifiically enter that into DTV under setting up Locals BUT see NO way to enter the decimal point???

I live in ZIP 97008 --- have a nice clear LOS - will be sure and check out your setup sounds good. In the end may have to wait for Mr. Ergen to give us HD Locals.

TKS Michael


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

If you can run a cable to outside and then see if you can get the signal that way. With a silver sensor and only being 4 miles away you should not have a problem getting it. Be sure to use the frequency numbers when you try and add a channel. antennaweb.org is a place to get the mappings. Don't try 2.1 when you try and manually add them. Use the frequency number for NBC, ABC, etc from antennaweb.org. 

If you do a manually add DTV and then enter the frequency of one of the majors you can then use it like a signal finder. See if you are getting anything. If you are not getting any activity on the screen you might have some other issues. You should get some activity being that close.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

cyberized said:


> TKS -
> My biggy local channels are 2,6,8,10,12,49. I believe from looking at the Antenna site that that would be 2.1, 6.1, etc. Tried to specifiically enter that into DTV under setting up Locals BUT see NO way to enter the decimal point???
> 
> I live in ZIP 97008 --- have a nice clear LOS - will be sure and check out your setup sounds good. In the end may have to wait for Mr. Ergen to give us HD Locals.
> ...


Michael, please notice your frequency assignments. http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/Address.aspx

Please note that you talked about trying to input 2.1 and 6.1 directly into your 6-1-5 menu. But you cannot do it that way. You must know the assignment then use that. The 2.1, 6.1, etc. are ATSC TVCT (Terrestrial Virtual Channel Table) assignments and are not real. For instance looking at your chart, to manually enter your Digital ATSC channel 2.1 into your 811's OTA map you would use channel frequency 43, not 2, 6.1 would be 40, and so on. Channel 2 is the actual NTSC Analog assignment. 2.1 would be a virtual assignment. TVCT is a completely optional feature, your broadcaster can choose to remap using TVCT embedded in the PSIP, or stick to the assigned ATSC frequency.

Hope this helps,


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## cyberized (Mar 7, 2003)

I'm Thanking the Lord and eatin' Crow! After all this hassle turns out once again human/operator error strikes again. Turns out that the installer thought he was hooking up my OTA antenna but he had screwed another cable onto that connector. I guess that explains NO SIgnal at all eh? I decided to try my Silver Sensor outside - so I drilled a hole in the wall and unhooded the cable at the OTA antenna end - shoved it throught the wall and waited for resistence, there was none, I came to the other unconnected end of the cable. 
Now I too can testify to how good these little Silver Sensors are - after hooking it up for the FIRST time finally, having it SCAN, it found about 12 Channels for me, after checking them I deleted out like 4 of them [all pixelated] BUT that left me with the 8 Channels that I had HOPED I might receive OTA. This is so GREAT - now with the Dish "pak" and VOOM - it all adds up to a nice chunk of HD to choose from.

NEXT question now - I would like to move these OTA HD Channels into my HD Favorite Group [all HD} with all the other HD channels - BUT - I have read her and there that this can create problems for your 811 - - - is this true? Hate to leave them in the ALL channels with all SD. What do you think?

TKS Michael


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I am the one that mentioned that Cyberized and this is mainly a 287 issue as far as I can see. I have had this happen twice to me. What happens is that if the station decides to muck with the PSIP data it can cause the 811 to corrupt the favorite list. From my experience, This happens when a station moves from its mapped channel to the frequency channel. If the corruptions happens you need to reset your box to factory defaults, hard reboot twice, and then re-add the channels. 

I would give it a try and you know how to fix if if you run into the issue. 

Welcome to the 811 world. If you have any other issues, feel free to post them and we would be happy to help. Search is your friend on this forum and you can find a lot of great tips by just browsing the threads. Remember default only goes back 60 days and changing it to show all threads might result in mining some nuggets.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

cyberized said:


> NEXT question now - I would like to move these OTA HD Channels into my HD Favorite Group [all HD} with all the other HD channels - BUT - I have read her and there that this can create problems for your 811 - - - is this true? Hate to leave them in the ALL channels with all SD. What do you think?


 You should be fine. There were a couple bugs in P287, but they have been resolved in the new release. I have not seen the favorites bug Ron and a few others have encountered. I have my OTA's in my favs. I also mapped down my LIL locals side by side with my OTA digitals. Looking in the attached pic, you will see my LIL and OTA locals mapped into a favorites list with std sat channels. The 13.0 local is LIL off Sat 121, and the 13.1 and 13.2 are digital OTA. Notice, if you scan or map ANY Analog NTSC OTA channels, you will not be able to bring your Sat delivered LIL locals into 2-99 channel range within your EPG.


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## olgeezer (Dec 5, 2003)

cyberized said:


> TKS -
> My biggy local channels are 2,6,8,10,12,49. I believe from looking at the Antenna site that that would be 2.1, 6.1, etc. Tried to specifiically enter that into DTV under setting up Locals BUT see NO way to enter the decimal point???
> 
> I live in ZIP 97008 --- have a nice clear LOS - will be sure and check out your setup sounds good. In the end may have to wait for Mr. Ergen to give us HD Locals.
> ...


The silver sensor is a great indoor antenna for UHF, it's poor for stations 2-13


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## the_bear (Oct 18, 2004)

olgeezer said:


> The silver sensor is a great indoor antenna for UHF, it's poor for stations 2-13


For the gain per-channel of the SS see:
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/comparing.html


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## cyberized (Mar 7, 2003)

Yo BEAR,
TKS for sharing that informative LINK. One important thing I may have learned about my Silver Sensor that they do not tell you on the package etc. - - - apparently by the diagrams I was pointing it "backwards" - I figured the pointed end should go toward the stations - BUT - if that article and drawing are correct, I was wrong, and the WIDE end goes toward the signal source.


TKS Michael


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

cyberized said:


> TKS -
> My biggy local channels are 2,6,8,10,12,49. I believe from looking at the Antenna site that that would be 2.1, 6.1, etc. Tried to specifiically enter that into DTV under setting up Locals BUT see NO way to enter the decimal point???


Assuming you have set up your local HD channels, then the correct entry form for 2.1, aka 2-1, is 00201 or abbreviated 0021. There are no dash or period buttons and the leading zeroes tell the box to look in the low numbers. Or as we used to say Read the Fine Manual (RTFM) or words to that effect.
-Ken


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

KKlare said:


> Assuming you have set up your local HD channels, then the correct entry form for 2.1, aka 2-1, is 00201 or abbreviated 0021. There are no dash or period buttons and the leading zeroes tell the box to look in the low numbers. Or as we used to say Read the Fine Manual (RTFM) or words to that effect.
> -Ken


This would be correct during normal operation, but not in the 6-1-5 Local Setup Menu.


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