Fox - Witi

[budda]

Is there a target date for WITI haveing the transmitter, move up to I believe 900 feet.

[foxeng]

Originally posted by Tom Snyder
Thank you for being the most forthcoming Fox representative in our little Web site's history.  Actually, I've seen your posts at AVS, and I know you've taken some bullets.  We'll try to be friendly here.

Well I try and keep the kevlar on no matter where I am!    I find that most people have an open mind, but there are some that you could say the sky was blue and they would argue it is red just to not be proven wrong. Hey, I am wrong all the time! Just ask anyone!

I had a good dicussion with Chuck last Fall and I was aware of the tower issues, but he never mentioned anything about maintaining the low power once the antenna moved.

My quess would be they would stay at low power, but FOX handles every station differently depending on many different things. Since Milwaukee (#31) is a larger market than mine (#47) and there are others in between, we would be down the line for full power anyway. Milwaukee would go full power before we would so you may be right, WITI may go full power when the antenna is moved, but I have no knowledge, first hand or last hand on what Chuck is going to do in the near future. That is between him, Earl Arbuckle (who is the coolest big time engineer I know and lurks AVS too) and Dick Slenker, who is the the head of engineering for the stations group.

Germantown is about 21 miles Northwest of the new tower site, 16 miles NNW from the current site. My RS Double Bowtie gives me 80's to 90's on every other digital channel (everybody's signals are coming from the same area), but only a 22 on 6's DTV signal.  

I guess we'll see if the height does the trick...there's an 88.1 FM on their tower at 1000 ft with an ERP of about 100 watts that comes in here with a pretty solid signal.

If the antenna is in the 600-1000 ft range, (damn I wish I knew what height the antenna was going to be, it would help a lot), you might have a chance with a "rabbit ear" setup. A modest outside antenna would get it, if their antenna pattern isn't a narrow one based on what I have seen here. Rule of thumb is if you have the height, and limited power, get the antenna up as high as you can and run out of power before you run out of range. That is what we are doing. If I could triple power, I could cover 80% of my market with a usuable signal, not a great signal, but a usable one, but I run out of power before I run out of antenna coverage!

I didn't mean to take over here, so I will slink back into the shadows and start lurking again! :wave:

One last thing, the FOX station in Salt Lake has the same transmitter and antenna that WITI has and it sits on a 10,000 ft mountain and has 100 mile coverage. Now I know you guys don't have 10k moutains, but that shows you what can be done with low power and antenna height.

Also, if you are interested in what these transmitters look like, yoiu can go to http://www.fox8wghp.com/dtv2 and there are pictures from the install at my station. The big blue box to the right is a VERY SMALL part of my channel 8 analog transmitter.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Originally posted by drgingras
Maybe us OTA guys will have to do a group buy on This . We could start cascading from Starving's house:D

Hate to have to call TWC - I just know the cable guy will hate me for having to climb back up that pole to disconnect me in February after the Packers win the Superbowl.

Or, maybe Tom's quoting the official Faux policy:o

Dave

I would be fine with sharing what signal I have with others.  Although I honestly don't think the signal is worth paying for.  The flickering is obnoxious and the signal strength can be low occasionally.

Any idea from the other Fox person here on what could be causing the "low refresh rate" phenomenon on WITI-DT?

Starving

[foxeng]

Originally posted by StarvingForHDTV
Any idea from the other Fox person here on what could be causing the "low refresh rate" phenomenon on WITI-DT?

We are running the same streaming equipment and we don't see that here. It could be a parameter that is not set correctly in either the encoder or the upconverter. Do you see this during network or all the time? If you don't see it during network, then it could be the analog to digital converter. Just some ramblings.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Originally posted by foxeng
We are running the same streaming equipment and we don't see that here. It could be a parameter that is not set correctly in either the encoder or the upconverter. Do you see this during network or all the time? If you don't see it during network, then it could be the analog to digital converter. Just some ramblings.

I see it during both network and non-network feeds.  It seems worse for non-network.  The worst culprits are graphics.  During newscasts the text and surrounding areas really show off the problem.  In addition during sports coverage, the text areas where scores are displayed show off the situation well too.  Outside of text and graphics, I can see the problem when looking at sharp edges like the outline of a car or the goal posts during football were just terrible.

One day I pulled in a Fox digital channel out of Chicago, and none of these problems existed.  I find the local problem strange and annoying.

Starving

[foxeng]

Originally posted by StarvingForHDTV
I see it during both network and non-network feeds.  It seems worse for non-network.  The worst culprits are graphics.  During newscasts the text and surrounding areas really show off the problem.  In addition during sports coverage, the text areas where scores are displayed show off the situation well too.  Outside of text and graphics, I can see the problem when looking at sharp edges like the outline of a car or the goal posts during football were just terrible.

One day I pulled in a Fox digital channel out of Chicago, and none of these problems existed.  I find the local problem strange and annoying.

Starving

Do you see WITI OTA or cable. If cable, does anyone see it OTA. If not, then it must be in cable.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Originally posted by foxeng
Do you see WITI OTA or cable. If cable, does anyone see it OTA. If not, then it must be in cable.

OTA.  I don't have cable.  I think someone did mention that they saw it on cable too.  I thought maybe it was my set top box at first, but I've tried all the other digital stations on 480p and 1080i settings and I can't see the problem anywhere else.

Starving