Over the Air digital channels missing?

[BFavre4MVP]

I own a 32 in. dynex that I bought at Best Buy the day after Thanksgiving.  It came with a built in HD tuner.  I have a good amount of digital channels, including having Fox HD at 1-2 for watching Packer games most Sundays, 1-4 for WTMJ HD, as well as a few others.  

However, I don't seem to be able to get the feeds for ABC HD (by most accounts... 85-12. this channel does not appear on my channel list) or CBS HD (I've had channel 106-10 for a long time, assuming it was HD and wondering why it looked so crappy, until I learned it was their 480i digital channel).

I stumbled upon this list to come to these conclusions.  

Do I need another antenna to get the ABC HD for the NBA Finals plus the higher quality CBS digital channel (apparently 85-5)?  

Any help would be appreciated.

[goldenear]

Aren't you mixing the QAM's with the OTA channels?

[BFavre4MVP]

I think you're right.  Sorry for being a novice, I'm new to the realm of HD outside of my Ps3.

I'm hooked in to a regular cable jack, because the TWC box is on a TV in the other room.  I did the regular channel search and it came up with something like 30 digital channels in addition to the 70-some analogs.  Some of the DTV channels are "scrambled video."  Some are just the TWC preview channels, telling you what you can upgrade to.  

The local channels I get are:

Fox HD 1-2
WTMJ HD 1-4

plus a bunch of MPTV digital channels, UPN 24, CBS non-HD (106-10) and a few other NBC and Fox channels that appear to be in standard def.

All I'm looking for is CBS HD (it would have been nice to have it for March Madness, but if I can get it now at least I can watch football in HD this fall) and ABC HD for the remainder of the NBA playoffs, but I don't know how to get those QAM channels to appear.

[brewtownska]

I did notice recently my Samsung QAM box changed 58-1 back to 85-5 (just a remapping issue), so there may be changes being made.  Not sure if that's a change by the station or TWC.

My buddy has a Samsung TV with a QAM tuner and had a similar issue where he could pick us SOME of the stations, not all.  He ended up changing his channel search from STD to one of the other choices (I think those are IRC and HRC...he used IRC), then he was able to find all the stations.  If nobody else has a more concrete answer, it can't hurt to give it a try.

Mike

[BFavre4MVP]

Thanks Brewtown, I'll give that a shot.  I don't know who Dynex's parent company is, but I'm almost positive it's Samsung because my friend has a 50" Samsung and all the menus/displays are identical.

[BFavre4MVP]

The only tuning bands right now are "cable" and "air".  When I go to air and do I channel search, it comes up with 13 analog channels and 0 digital channels, which is very strange.  I don't have IRC or HRC, but for some reason I feel like they used to be there.  This is odd.

[brewtownska]

If it turns out your only mode to search for is just "cable", then you may want to start looking at your signal path to see if there is anything that might cause a low signal.  In some cases, if you have a low signal at the time of scanning, you may not being able to pick that channel up again without doing another auto-scan.  Having an extra splitter or a cheap splitter can be enough to degrade the quality enough to miss channels.  Another common culprit is an OLD splitter, one that doesn't pass the correct frequencies through.  TWC usually finds and removes these when they're out (especially if they installed Roadrunner for you), but if you had your own or added one, make sure it passes the correct frequencies.  It seems to me my OLD ones were like 5-500mhz, but I think you now need them from like 5-1000mhz (I've seen some higher than that).

Another place to check for more details on the strengths and weaknesses of your TV or who makes it is the AVS forum.  You'll find way more info than you'd likely want, but it'll make you an expert on your TV quickly.  Go to avsforum.com then to the "Display Devices" forum, then into the "LCD Flat Panel Displays", then you can do a search for Dynex.  There's a few threads, but without knowing the exact model#, I don't know which you should look at.  I do see something about the new model no longer has the QAM tuner, which makes me wonder if it just didn't perform well in the previous model.
Here's a direct link that might also help research the QAM and signal strength issue, with people giving input about why they pick up different channels in different rooms in their house even though they should get all of them on all TVs:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=990603&highlight=dynex

I hope one of the suggestions helps you track down a fix!

Mike

[BFavre4MVP]

Thanks for all the hard work, Mike.  I'll start to look into that.  It may actually be a combination of the 2.  I know I'm in a secluded room and we've split the cable into here.

I don't know if this will help, but I'm pondering buying a second TWC digital cable box for 2 months as an add on to our box in the main room.  If I have to commit to a contract, I won't, since I'll be returning to the dorms at Marquette University (with my TV) by the end of August.  If I could get 2 months of local HD channels plus ESPN HD, ESPN2 HD, and FSN Wisconsin HD, I'll be thrilled.  We'll see how it goes.