On Jan 1, 3:07*pm, mike wrote:
Great job fixing the flatness.
My problems are mostly on VHF 2,6,8.
And there's a few degrees difference in the direction to the
different
channels that adds to the problems. *Sometimes, I tape three
channels
at once, so turning the antenna for each one is not an option.
My PC tuner is an ATI HDTV Wonder also. *It's the worst one I have.
What software do you use with the HDTV wonder?
My CPU is only 2.8GHz and I had insufficient horsepower to run any
of the
M$ stuff.
WatchHDTV is the only free program I found that worked at all. *Has
a
lot of studdering on VHF when conditions are not perfect. *I get
better
reception when I REDUCE the signal level with a passive attenuator.
And it has a weird problem. *If the computer goes to sleep, I can
never
get the TV to work again. *Rebooting doesn't help, but totally
powering
the system off brings back the TV.
You really have DTV on 2, 6 and 8? I checked this list and found only
6 channel 2 DTVs in the entire country.
http://www.dtv.gov/stationlist.htm
The first DVR PC I used was an AMD Sempron on a cheap ECS mobo wit 512
megs RAM and an ATI 9200 video card. The ATI software needed 20-40%
CPU and would stutter if surfing the web while it was recording. The
later Gigabyte 780 series boards with AMD Phenom II quad core
processors never stutter and can watch an HD recording while recording
another HD AND play out another HD stream across the LAN to another
PC. 2 machines have ATI HDTV Wonders ( I have 2 more machines off line
that have Wonders also). All machines run Win XP Pro SP3. The ATI
software is MMC 9.14 which has quirks but rarely screws up. The 3rd
machine has a Hauppauge 1250 tuner. None of the machines stutters but
the Hauppauge can handle dynamic ghosting better than the ATIs back
when I had antenna issues a few years back. The Hauppauge machine uses
WinTV v6 as the recording software and it too rarely screws up.
Commercials are removed with VideoReDo. All the machines are shut down
cold every night. The monitors and disk drives are never shut down
during the day. All have 1.5T drives and secondary drives as well, 1
500GB, 1 1T and 1 2T for a total of 8T spinning between 3 machines
with another 8T of USB drives.
We live in zip 90274 about 35 miles from Mt. Wilson and run a Winegard
SquareShooter on the roof for the UHF channels. The VHF (7, 9, 11, 13)
are picked up with a Winegard 7082 (20 yrs old but only 1 year
outdoors) in the rafters of the garage about 8 ft lower than the roof
antenna. They're combined with a UHF / VHF splitter running backwards
as a diplexer (combiner) and no preamps with the feed split 4 ways.
Channel 7 reports 66% on the ATI tuners. All other channels are 80-90%
The Hauppauge tuner reports S/N ratio. Ch 7 comes in at 25dB+ and the
rest max out at 30dB. For DTV at least 15dB S/N is required.
For most areas of the country the Winegard HD7694 would be an
excellent choice. Good gain and front/back ratio and directivity and
not big BUT it's no good for ch2-6 (actual digital channels, NOT
virtual channels) and FM.
http://www.winegard.com/kbase/upload/HD7694P.pdf
If you need ch 2-6 and.or FM this will do well but its BIG. It's
basically the specs of the 7694 but with low band VHF. The thing about
these guys is that they get their engineering right and don't make
outlandish claims. They just WORK.
http://www.winegard.com/kbase/upload/HD7084P.pdf
Excessive signal strength can cause overload issues but it's also
possible that the in line attenuator improves the termination of the
line and reduces reflections (same as multipath) in the transmission
line. The antenna itself and transmission line (connector
installation) can cause this as well. After reading on other groups I
switched to Snap n Seal connectors and outdoors under weather boots I
use clear heat sink grease (GC 10-8101) on the cable end to keep
oxygen out of the connector. I dissembled a connector 15 years old
with that treatment and it looked new inside. Pay attention to the
details and you won't have big issues.
Did you notice page 2 of the Georgia Tech antenna? It's even better
than page 1. I've wondered if you could use a wire basket instead of a
trash can to reduce wind loading.
G²