Germantown OTA 10 day report

[audiopile]

I have spent the previous 10 days fooling around with OTA HDTV.Yah and I remain gobsmacked and more than pleased with the results Current results are: Chn.8/10-1 thru 7 WMVS 100%,22/30 WVCY 44% -unwatchable,25/24-1 WCGV UPN 100%,28/4-1 WTMJ NBC 100%,33/6-1 WITI FOX 18-21% - no picture ,34/12-1 WISN ABC 100%,35/36-1 WMVT PBS high def. 100%,,40/55-1 WPXE PAX 100%,46/1-1 or 58-1 WDJT CBS 79-86% ,61/18-1 WVTV WB 86-93%..  The upshot is that I don't get two digital stations - ALL the rest have stable pictures that are at their worst the best I have ever seen from my TV?
      The really puzzling thing to me is that the down converted ( to 480i) images from HD feed look amazingly good - way better than I would have thought this TV could produce.? This is particularly noticable when you compare the SD images that are on some digital channels with the real HD images on some of their competitors some of the time. This really puzzles me since I'm always downconverting to 480ii.
      Equipment used is : old Toshiba TSA-TTS folded diopole antenna ( basement ballast from a freind) installed in attic eaves under/inside roof, RG-6QS with snap and seals , Tru-Spec TA-12 UHF/VHF/FM distribution amp mounted in attic ,split at that point between second floor TV and feed to basement, 3 way splitter in basement feeding kitchen , bedroom and third splitter feeding into Hughes HIRD E-86 box and 5 year old good 32" Panasonic non-HDTV TV. Really good Analog signals on all but 41,55,30 and 18 - this is important since I have 3 TV's that do not have HDTV converters. 41,30 and 55 have always been pretty much un-watchable in the analog world - since two of these have really good HDTV signals this isn't a big problem.
       The one oddity is that 18's analog signal used to come in pretty well - the "new" antenna and positioning it for HD reception have knocked 18 anaolg into the big time ghost situation ?
    May try a Channel Master 4228 and a combiner with the Toishiba dipole - will let ya'll know if this works.
    My basic conclusion is that  waiting 'till you can afford that $4,000 Plasma HDTV display is probably good  therapy - but OTA HD is cheap and still rocks fed into a "standard" NTSC TV/display - way better than I would have thought ten days ago!

[Tom Snyder]

I'm far enough northwest in G town that I have a Hubertus phone number... and If I can get a solid picture and 76 signal from WITI Digital with my little old indoor double bow-tie in my living room, you GOTTA be able to do at least as well with yours.

[audiopile]

Tom- this is a strange thing in that at one point with my original lash up antenna array/pile o junk - I was getting 6-1 @ 52-58% which was watchable - the problem was I wasn't getting a signal on 1-1 that was usefull and CBS has more HD programs that I care about than Fox ( hard to believe - but I find spectator sports real boring).
      The current more coherent  junk antenna works quite well in the analog realm ('cept 18) and pretty amazing in the digital area ('cept 6-1).
       Eyballing it - it seems like I'm probably trying to work thru the watertower hill on Mequon Rd. just East of town.. May be time to actually spend some time at the library with the topo maps and see what terrain actually is between me and antenna alley on Cap dr.?
       As you can probably tell I'm not much of a video purist  and frankly am really impresed with how easy it was to get and use the OTA HDTV signal.. I've been screwing around with various and sundry forms of consumer electronics for 35 years and this is the biggest improvement for the least effort  ever.