[opendtv] (no subject)

nicholas kocsis wrote:
 
> I brought up the issue of ATSC 8VSB OTA reception
> recently at my local Future Shop (Canada) consumer
> electronics big box store (owned by Best Buy). If
> there is a single retailer who demonstrates OTA
> reception using a gain UHF antenna on a rotator I
> would be amazed to hear of it.
 
Over here, although they do not advertize it (of course), our closest Best Buy 
does demo OTA HDTV sports on Saturdays. Because, they say, the HD picture 
received OTA is better than it is on any other medium. It's one of those Best 
Buy stores with a Magnolia Center, a corner of the store reserved for high end 
stuff.
 
But they only told me because they saw I was interested in OTA. Otherwise, this 
was a well kept secret. Heaven forbid anyone should know.
 
> There was an occasion in the early fall when we had
> a warm spell during which the weakest Buffalo channels
> were lost for days on end (a Syracuse station 200 miles
> away came in wonderfully well for all of an evening).
> I blamed it on a propagation problem related to ducting
> when signal is captured by a boundary of hot and cold
> air layers in the atmosphere).  In the radar business
> we attributed it to a 'weather inversion' when cars and
> trucks in motion could be captured on an interstate 200
> miles away while aircraft at a higher altitude were
> totally invisible to air traffic controllers.
 
I have had this same problem with the Baltimore stations on occasion. However, 
as you point out with the radar similarity, this has absolutely nothing to do 
with type of modulation. You need a receiver with good sensitivity to reduce 
the likelihood of these problems, but 8-VSB or COFDM would not change the way 
the EM energy is bent to go up into space. So I think it's wrong to attribute 
this problem to 8-VSB. With analog TV, those were the days of really crappy 
reception. With the digital cliff, ... Best not to have to depend on 
transmitters that are very far away.
 
Also, is Buffalo across Lake Ontario from where you live? Such a body of water 
can play particularly bad tricks.
 
> P.S.  The Samsung STB is becoming increasingly rare on
> the shelves of U.S. retailers while none can be had in
> Canada (to my knowledge).
 
Many of the coupon boxes probably beat that Samsung, in terms of reception. It 
appeared on the scene about the same time as A/74, so I don't think it's the 
last word in reception. Cliff has one of them, and at least one CECB. From his 
reports, I gather that particular Samsung STB has been bested. I did notice 
that both my LG TV and my Philips/Funai PVR from last year are very similar, 
and both easily beat the Accurian for long range reception and for resistance 
to multipath.
 
Bert
 
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